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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

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Copyright No. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 



WITH GOD 

IN THE WORLD 
a Series of Papers 

BY 

CHARLES H. BRENT 

OF ST. STEPHEN'S CHURCH 
BOSTON 




NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 

LONDON AND BOMBAY 

1899 






r ^ SEP 2 71898 



Copyright, 1899. h Longmans, Green, & Co. 









43" 



D COPIES RECEI 









TO MY FRIENDS 

JOHN W. WOOD, SILAS McBEE 

AND 

JAMES L. HOUGHTELING 




preface 



\HARLES DA RTF IN says somewhere 
that " the only objecl in writing a book is 
a proof of earnestness T Whether it is the 
only objeSf, may be a question; it is certainly one 
objecl. And the poorest book that ever went to press, 
merits respeSf, provided that its writer is sincere and 
speaks from conviftion. It is this and the sense that 
" thought is not our own until we impart it" to 
others, that has encouraged me to write these pages 
— originally a series of papers prepared for the Saint 
Andrew's Cross, the organ of a Society for which I 
am glad to profess publicly a deep admiration and af- 
feclion. Often, more frequently far than is noted, I 
have borrowed the thought and language of others to 
express my own mind. I send out this little volume 
with the hope that, before it meets with the fate of 
the ephemeral literature to which it belongs, it may 
help a few here and there to take up life's journey 
with steadier steps and cheerier mien. 

C. H. B. 



Contents 



CHAPTERS 



I. THE UNIVERSAL ART Page I 

II. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — LOOKING 9 

HI. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — SPEAKING 20 

IV. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — THE RESPONSE 29 

V. THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 4.0 

VI. KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP 52 

VII. FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 6 1 

VHI. FRIENDSHIP IN GOD — CONTINUED 7 I 

IX. THE CHURCH IN PRAYER 84 

X. THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 97 

XI. WITNESSES UNTO THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE 

EARTH III 

XII. THE INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY 
APPENDIX — WHERE GOD DWELLS 



123 
135 



ur 



Chapter i 



The Universal Art 




T is productive of much mischief to 
try to make people believe that the 
life of prayer is easy. In reality there 
is nothing quite so difficult as strong 
prayer, nothing so worthy of the attention and the 
exercise of all the fine parts of a great manhood. 
On the other hand there is no man who is not equal 
to the task. So splendid has this human nature of 
ours become through the Incarnation that it can 
bear any strain and meet any demand that God 
sees fit to put upon it. Some duties are individual 
and special, and there is exemption from them 
for the many, but there is never any absolution 
from a duty for which a man has a capacity. 
There is one universal society, the Church, for 
which all are eligible and with which all are 
bound to unite ; there is one universal book, the 
Bible, which all can understand and which it is 
the duty of all to read ; there is one universal art, 
prayer, in which all may become well skilled and 

[ * ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

to the acquirement of which all must bend their 
energies. 

Aftive or dormant, the instindl of praver abides, 
a faithful tenant, in every soul. The peasants who 
went to the Incarnate One and said " Lord, teach 
us to pray," were representative of a whole race, 
a race which feels stirring within its breast a capaci- 
ty for prayer, but whose power to pray falls far 
short of the desire. The instinft to pray may be 
undeveloped, or paralyzed by violence, or it may 
lie bed-ridden in the soul through long negleft ; 
but even so, no benumbed faculty is more readily 
roused to life and nerved to aftion than that of 
prayer. The faculty is there ; no one is without it. 
Whether it expands, and how, is only a question 
of the will of the person concerned. 
It is good to be quite honest and frank. Is it not 
so that the real thing that makes men dumb to- 
wards God is, in the first instance, at any rate, not 
intellectual doubt about the efficacy of prayer but 
the difficulty of it all — the rebellion of the flesh, 
the strain upon the attention, the claim upon the 
time r Are not the common stumbling-blocks in 
the way of prayer incidental rather than essential ? 
Do men give up prayer because they are conscien- 
tiously convinced that they would do violence to 

[ 2'] 



THE UNIVERSAL ART 

their noble nature if they were to persist in its ex- 
ercise ? Nothing can release a man from the duty 
of praying but the profound conviftion that it 
would be a sin for him to continue to pray. And 
it might be safely added that any one thus mo- 
mentarily caught in the toils of pure reason, any 
one endowed with such a delicate conscience as 
would lead to this, must eventually turn again with 
joy to the neglefted task. Even the great agnostic 
scientist, Tyndall, who, of course, had a very lim- 
ited view of what prayer was capable of accom- 
plishing, and was in a position to perceive only one 
dim ray of its beauty — its subjective refining in- 
fluence upon the petitioner — even such an one 
declares that "prayer in its purer forms hints at 
disciplines which few of us can neglect without 
loss."* 

How to perfect the talent of prayer — that is the 
question. Bent upon this errand many wind them- 
selves in the folds of complicated rules or bathe 
themselves in the vapour of fascinating theories, all 
to no purpose. Or, as in the case of most things 
worth coveting, they cast around for some easy 
way of attainment, only to experience that where 
they "looked for crowns to fall," they "find the 
* On Prayer as a Form of Physical Energy. 

[ 3 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 
tug 's to come,— that 's all." Simplicity and cour- 
age are two virtues indispensable for those who 
covet to pray well. Especially must they be ready 
to embrace difficulty and court pain— and that 
through the long stretch of a life-time. 

Let no man think that sudden in a minute 
All is accomplished and the work is done; 

Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it 
Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun. 

Let it be clearly understood at the outset, then, 
that though the art of prayer is a universal art it 
is the most difficult of all. But even so this is not 
an excuse for discouragement or a justification of 
spiritual indolence, for a man's best desires are al- 
ways the index and measure of his possibilities ; 
and the most difficult duty that a man is capable 
of doing is the duty that above all he should do. 
A moment's reflection must convince us that man 
cannot teach man to pray, because of what prayer 
is. Prayer is man's side of converse with God ; it is 
speech Godward. How passing absurd it would be 
for a third person to presume to instruft either one 
of two companions how to hold converse with his 
friend ! Were he to venture the impertinence he 
would develop in his pupil the curse of self-con- 
[ 4 ] 



THE UNIVERSAL ART 

seriousness — that is all. We can learn to converse 
with men only by conversing ; we can learn to 
pray to God only by praying. Prayer is a universal 
art, but there is only one Teacher for all, and He 
never teaches two persons in exadlly the same 
way. God's friendships are as diverse as the souls 
with whom He interchanges confidences. These 
confidences must come from Himself; none else 
can impart them. There are certain great truths 
about prayer which may be formulated to good pur- 
pose — fundamental laws governing all fellowship 
with God, laws to which all in common must give 
heed ; but beyond this one may not venture. In the 
matter of prayer as in all else God reserves to Him- 
self the exclusive right of imparting His most inti- 
mate secrets diredtly to each separate soul, having a 
separate confidence for each according to its capaci- 
ty, temperament, and all those qualities which dis- 
tinguish every man from every other man. 
Though we may have learned the fundamental 
principles of prayer from devout friends and teach- 
ers, whatever we really know of prayer we have 
learned by praying. Even the mother, at whose 
knee the earliest phrases of prayer were lisped out, 
at the best only led us gently into the presence of 
God. It is not too much to say that the Church 
[ 5 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

herself cannot do more than put the soul very near 
God and leave it there, trusting that something 
will come of it. The rest must proceed in dire6l 
course from the lips of the Most High Himself. 
So delicate and subtle is the correspondence be- 
tween the soul and God, so "intensely personal" 
a thing is prayer* that we are often seriously hin- 
dered rather than helped by the blundering but 
well-intended efforts of those who would guide 
us to better devotion. Even to put a manual of 
private prayers into the hands of some persons who 
have not been accustomed to reach God through 
a book might be sufficient to mar the spontaneity 
of their approach to Him and check the intimate 
relations with Him which have hitherto always 
obtained. Because it suits one person's tempera- 
ment to call in the aid of a manual it by no means 
follows that everyone else should be presented with 
a copy of the book. Indeed happy are those souls 
who have always been able to speak with a rever- 
ent yet free familiarity with God, having nothing 
to aid save the vision of His face ; and the final 
aim of every good manual is to emancipate the 
soul into the joyousness of a spontaneity which is 
wholly devoid of blighting self-consciousness. 
* Maturin. 

[ 6 ] 



THE UNIVERSAL ART 

It ought to be further added that every one who 
regularly uses set forms of prayer should habitually 
incorporate into his devotions at least some words 
of his own which, however poor and few, yet are 
fresh and new from his heart. Of course what has 
been said about forms of prayer applies exclusively 
to private devotions. When the great corporate 
life of the Church speaks in worship it must be 
with one clear voice unmixed with the idiosyn- 
crasies of the individual and summing up the as- 
pirations of the best. But of this later. 
The world just now is sadly in need of better ser- 
vice, but before this can be rendered there must be 
better prayer. A low standard of prayer means a 
low standard of character and a low standard of 
service. Those alone labour effe&ively among men 
who impetuously fling themselves upward towards 
God. In view of this it is a comfort to feel that no 
earnest man, whatever be the stage of his spiritual 
development, can be satisfied with his present at- 
tainments in his life of prayer. Fortunately for us, 
here as well as in other departments of life the 
ideal is always pressing itself upon our notice and 
making the adlual blush with shame for what it 
is. And it is just because this is so that there is 
hope of better things. The ideal beckons as well as 

[ 7 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

condemns. What if long steeps of toil, strewn with 
the stones of difficulty, lie in between ! God's home 
is far up on the hills, and nowhere is He so easily 
found as in a difficulty. As has been said, prayer is 
quite the most difficult task a man can undertake ; 
but it has this gracious compensation that in no 
other duty does God lend such direft, face-to-face 
help. Man may speak wise words about prayer ; 
the Church may bid to prayer ; but God alone can 
unfold to souls the delicate secrets of prayer. The 
best help is for the hardest duty — the help that 
comes straight from the Lord. 



[ 8 ] 



Chapter ii 




Friendship with God — Looking 

|ES, prayer is speech Godward, and 
worship is man's whole life of friend- 
ship with God. the flowing out, as it 
were, of all that tide of emotion and 
service which is love's best speech. It is by think- 
ing, then, of the nature of fellowship between man 
and man, which is the most beautiful thing in the 
world excepting only fellowship with God, that 
we can get substantial help in developing the life 
of prayer. Consider the Christian fellowship of two 
noble charadters. It is "the greatest love and the 
greatest usefulness, and the most open communi- 
cation, and the noblest sufferings, and the most ex- 
emplar faithfulness, and the severest truth and the 
heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds," 
— Jeremy Taylor stops here only because he has 
exhausted his stock of sublime phrases — " of which 
brave men and women are capable."* 
Friendship is a full, steady stream, not intermit- 
* Works: Vol. u 72. 

[ 9 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

tent or spasmodic. It is not something which lasts 
only when each looks into the other's eyes ; for 
"distance sometimes endears friendship, and ab- 
sence sweeteneth it." It moves and expands the 
life even when the mind is busied with matters 
prosaic and vexatious, even when there is no in- 
ward contemplation of the features or character 
of the absent friend. And yet, although friendship 
does not consist in face-to-face communication one 
with another, it is in this that it takes its rise, it is 
by this that it is fed. Fellowship is not the same as 
friendship, but there can be no friendship without 
fellowship. That is to say, there must be certain 
definite, formal a£ls, a£ts not made once for all, 
but repeated as often as opportunity is given ; such 
form the cradle and nursery of friendship. In them- 
selves they are not much — a grasp of the hand, a 
smile, a simple gift, a conventional salutation, a fa- 
miliar talk about familiar things — but they intro- 
duce soul to soul, and through them each gives to 
the other his deepest self. 

Friendship between man and man is no vague, in- 
tangible thing whose only reality is its name. Much 
less can one think thus of friendship with God. 
Friendship with God is the friendship of friend- 
ships. While it lives on strong and true even when 
[ io ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking 

we are not in conscious fellowship with Him, mo- 
ments of conscious realization and contemplation 
of His person, charafter and presence are as essen- 
tial to friendship with Him as food is necessary for 
the sustenance of life. There must be times of 
prayer and occasions of definite, formal approach 
to Him, the more the better, provided they be 
healthy and free. It is not an arbitrary enactment 
that declares morning, noonday and evening to be 
the moments of time when the soul of man should 
with peculiar intensity lift up its gaze unto the 
hills.* One recognizes immediately the inherent 
fitness of having conscious fellowship with God at 
the opening, in the middle and at the close of day. 
In the morning, — because man's powers are then 
replete with life, his will nerved to aft, his eye 
clear to see ; never is he so well able to gain a vi- 
sion of God, whether in the solitude of his room 
or in the quiet of the Church at an early Eucha- 
rist, as in the first hours of a new day. At noon, — 
because the soul like the body needs a mid-day 
rest ; the dust of aftivity and the distractions of 
business will have dimmed the morning vision be- 
fore the day is full gone, and it is good to refresh 
the nature by again, if it be only for a brief mo- 
* Ps.lv. 17. 

[ 11 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

ment, looking straight up into the face of the Most 
High. At night, — for the evening shadows find 
God's servant with soiled soul and drooping aspira- 
tions in sore need of that cleansing and cheer which 
the sight of God imparts. 

And the life of prayer works in a circle. The de- 
votions of the morning give tone to those which 
come at noon and night, while the night prayers 
in turn determine the quality of the morrow's. 
Men usually wake in the temper of mind in which 
they went to sleep. It is all-important to gain a 
clear vision of God as the last conscious aft before 
going to rest. The founder of French socialism 
was awakened every morning by a valet who said : 
"Remember, Monsieur le Comte, that you have 
great things to do." But it is not men who aspire 
only or chiefly in the morning that achieve great 
things, but rather those who aspire at night. What 
is of nature in the morning is of grace at night. 
The vision that comes easily at the beginning of 
the unused stretch of a new day is harder to see 
when disappointment and failure have clouded the 
eye of hope ; but it means more. The men who 
attain the highlands of the spiritual life never 
" sleep with the wings of aspiration furled." 
Of course God is always with us, always looking 
[ 12 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking 

at us with searching yet loving scrutiny. It would 
be impossible for us to be more completely in His 
presence than we are ; for in Him " we live, and 
move, and have our being." But for the most part 
our lives are spent without much conscious recog- 
nition of the fafr. He will be no more present at 
the last day when we stand before His throne than 
He is now. The only difference will be that then we 
shall see Him as He sees us ; we shall be so wholly 
absorbed by that consciousness that there will be 
room for no other consideration as, God grant, 
there will be no other desire. But before that 
moment comes men must practise looking into 
His face by faith so that it will not be unfamiliar 
as the face of a stranger when the last veil is 
swept aside. 

Among men contemplation of another's personal- 
ity is the requisite preliminary of fellowship with 
him. Fellowship can begin only when there is a 
mutual recognition each of his fellow's presence. 
Personality is the most powerful magnet the world 
knows ; and the finer the personality the more 
readily will all one's best impulses be set in motion 
and attracted to it. How vain then is it to attempt 
to speak to God before the consciousness of His 
living, loving presence has caught the attention 

[ 13 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

and absorbed the mind — or at any rate until we 
have done our best to see Him, attentive, sympa- 
thetic, with His gaze fixed upon us. Power to pray 
is proportionate to the vividness of our conscious- 
ness of His presence and personality. When a man 
is talking to a companion his mind is occupied 
with the sense of the presence of an attentive, sym- 
pathetic personality rather than with the thought 
of the precise words he is going to use. His fellow 
afts as a magnet to extracl his thoughts. An ora- 
tor makes his finest appeal when he is least con- 
scious of himself and most conscious of his audi- 
ence. Just so then is it with speech Godward. The 
moment a man is assured that God's personality 
is present and that His ear is opened earthward, 
speech heavenward is a power and a joy, and only 
then. Many make prayer a fine intellectual exer- 
cise or a training school for the attention — this 
and nothing more. They strain their utmost, and 
doubtless they succeed well, to understand each 
sentence uttered and to speak it intelligently. Their 
minds are on what they are saying rather than on 
the Person to Whom they are saying it. They reap 
about the same benefit as they would if they recited 
attentively a scene from Shakespeare. 
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills." The vi- 

[ H ] 






FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking 

sion of God unseals the lips of man. Herein lies 
strength for conflift with the common enemy of 
the praying world known as wandering thoughts. 
Personality will enchain attention when the most 
interesting intellectual, moral and spiritual con- 
cerns will fail to attradl. If the eye is fixed on 
God thought may roam where it will without ir- 
reverence, for every thought is then converted into 
a prayer. Some have found it a useful thing when 
their minds have wandered off from devotion and 
been snared by some good but irrelevant consider- 
ation, not to cast away the offending thought as 
the eyes are again lifted to the Divine Face, but 
to take it captive, carry it into the presence of God 
and weave it into a prayer before putting it aside 
and resuming the original topic. This is to lead cap- 
tivity captive. 

It is hard for those to see God's face who confine 
their contemplation of spiritual things to moments 
of formal devotion, who, while occupied with ma- 
terial things, do not explore what is beneath and 
beyond the visible, who do not strive to discern 
the moral and religious aspeft of every phase of 
life. On the other hand the vision of God becomes 
increasingly clear to such as look not at the things 
which are seen but at the things which are not 

[ *s ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

seen. These may be exceedingly practical people, 
people ever aftive in the commonplace duties of 
life, but their wont is to cast everything into the 
upward sweep of the Ascension of Jesus and every- 
thing is seen by them with the glow of heaven 
upon it. Of course they pray well. 
After all "the sin of inattention" does not begin 
at the time of formal approach to God. It only 
makes itself peculiarly manifest then. If a person 
lives listlessly and does not put his full force into 
the ordinary duties of his life where the aids to 
attention are plenty, how can he expeft to com- 
mand his mind at those times when it is called 
upon to make a supreme aft of attentiveness and 
see Him Who is invisible ? A good man of our 
day * said of himself : " My greatest help in life 
has been the blessed habit of intensity. I go at 
what I am about as if there was nothing else in 
the world for the time being." 
Here then are two obvious, simple and rational 
principles upon obedience to which hinges the 
ability to make one's own the growing vision of 
God — the habit of spiritualizing the commonplace 
and the habit of attention in work. Whoever equips 
himself with them has made the best possible pre- 
* Charles Kingsky. 

[ 16 ] 






FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking 

paration for approach to God. It is an indirect way 
of getting at things, it is true ; but often the method 
that is most indirect is the most direct. It is cer- 
tainly so in this case. 

Of course in considering the subject of God's Be- 
ing one cannot wholly avoid the difficult question 
of personality. It would be aside from our purpose, 
however, to discuss the matter philosophically. For 
all practical purposes there is ample and secure foot- 
ing near at hand. When by faith we look toward 
God, it is not toward an immovable but beautiful 
statue we turn, not to an abstract quality or a ten- 
dency that makes for righteousness, but to One 
Who looks with responsive gaze, Who notes our 
desires, Who heeds our words, Who lives, Who 
loves, Who acts. It is a horrible and deadening 
travesty of the truth to conceive of God as a great, 
impassive Being, seated on a throne of majesty, 
drinking in all the life and worship that flow from 
the service of His myriad creatures, Himself re- 
ceiving all and giving none. Though probably no 
one believes this as a matter of theory, when men 
look for God in the practice of prayer too often it 
is such a God they find. And many can say with 
Augustine as they review moments of fruitless de- 
votional effort in the past : " My error was my 

[ 17 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

God." * The truth is that though a great tide of 
energy moves ceaselessly toward God, it is but the 
shadow of what comes from Him. Indeed He is 
the Source of the life which flows inward toward 
Him as much as of that which flows outward from 
Him. He is undying energy, with unerring pur- 
pose, moving swiftly and noiselessly among men, 
striving to burn eternal life into their lame, stained, 
meagre souls. He is the Father that goes out to 
meet the returning profligate, the Shepherd that 
follows the track of the wandering sheep. Man 
has never yet had to wait for Him. He has always 
been as close to man as man would let Him come. 
His hands have never ceased to beat upon the bars 
of man's self-will to force an entrance into starved 
human nature. All this must be in man's concep- 
tion of God as he approaches Him. 
What above all gives to God that which enables 
man to see Him is the Incarnation. In the God- 
head is a familiar figure — the figure of Man. It 
was this that absorbed the attention of the dying 
Stephen. The Son of Man standing on God's right 
hand, was the vision that enthralled him as the 
stones battered out his life. And it is this same 

* For thou <wert not thyself, but a mere phantom, and my 
error was my God. Confessions, Bk. i<v. 7. 

[ 18 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Looking 

vision that makes the unseen world a reality to 
men now. Humanity is there at its centre, the 
pledge of sympathy, the promise of viftory. Not 
by a flight of imagination but by the exercise of 
insight we can look and see the sympathetic face 
of the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God ; 
and with the sight fellowship with God becomes 
possible, the string of the tongue is loosed and we 
are ready to pray. 



[ 19 ] 



Chapter (ft 




Friendship with God — Speaking 

UITE a sufficient guide as to how- 
God should be addressed is afforded 
by the Lord's Prayer. It was given 
by the Master in response to the ear- 
nest request of His disciples for instruction in 
prayer. Brief, compaft and complete, it is as it 
were the Christian seed-prayer. Once let it be 
planted in the heart of a Church or the soul of a 
child of God and it will grow into the glowing 
devotion of wondrous collefts and rich liturgies. 
Indeed there is no Christian prayer worth anything 
which does not owe its whole merit to the Lord's 
Prayer ; and the noblest liturgy of the Church is 
but the expansion and application of the same. 
Hence it is the touchstone of all prayer. By it the 
Christian's mode of address to God is finally ap- 
proved or condemned. 

How important is it, then, that a man should know 
the Lord's Prayer! — know it, not merely as a 
formula, but as the embodiment of the vital prin- 

[ 20 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Speaking 

ciples of converse with God. The process of yore 
must be repeated by the disciples of to-day. Like 
their predecessors of Galilee they must approach 
the unchangeable One and prefer the old entreaty : 
"Lord, teach us to pray." Nothing short of this 
will suffice. Then if they listen they will receive 
the familiar measures of the "Our Father" as a 
new and personal gift fresh and living from the lips 
of Jesus. It is good sometimes to " wait still upon 
God" between the sentences, and let the Holy 
Spirit apply each several petition to one's own spe- 
cial case and to all those interests which concern 
one's life — in sooth, translate it into the terms of 
our own day and generation. It is thus that the com- 
pressed richness of the Lord's Prayer is unfolded. 
The Lord's Prayer is one of those most precious of 
things known as common property. But a common 
possession to be worth anything to anybody must 
be related by every one of the multitude who claim 
a share in it, each to his own personality. Before 
common property can fully justify its claim to be 
common, it must become in a sense private by a 
process of implicit appropriation on the part of the 
individuals concerned. So while the Lord's Prayer 
ideally belongs to every child of God as the com- 
mon heritage of prayer, it adtually belongs only to 
[ 21 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

those who have recognized and used it as a personal, 
though not exclusive, gift from its Author. 
Not the least important characteristic of the Lord's 
Prayer is its simplicity in thought and expression. 
Surely it is not without significance that as it stands 
in the English tongue it is the purest piece of Saxon 
in literature, a monument of clearness and sim- 
plicity. God neither speaks or desires to be spoken 
to in grandiloquent language which belongs to the 
courts of earthly kings. The difficulty that so many 
persons find in praying without the aid of some 
form of devotion is largely due to the impression 
that the language needed for address to God is not 
such as an ordinary mortal can frame. There are 
four leading principles, the first of which contra- 
dicts this misconception, that stand out in bold 
prominence in the Lord's Prayer, and tell us what 
all speech Godward should be. 
§ I . Prayer must be familiar yet reverent. We are 
taught to address God as our Father. What a host 
of intimate confidences this single word calls up ! 
There is no familiarity so close as that between 
child and father, no sympathy so sensitive. When 
Scripture declares that Enoch walked with God, 
whatever else it means beyond, it means at least 
that Enoch was able to hold familiar converse 
[ 22 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Speaking 

with God in prayer. Those who knew him could 
find no better way of describing his relationship 
with God than by drawing the pifture of the fa- 
miliar companionship of two intimate friends. Or 
again, when Abraham is termed the friend of God 
it implies, as well as much beside, that he knew 
how to speak familiarly yet acceptably to God. All 
this was long ago, before man's full relation to 
God was made known. The coming of the Son 
of God as the Son of Man makes what was really 
deep seem shallow, so mighty was the change that 
was wrought. It is not merely as an ordinary friend 
that the Christian may speak to God, but as a son. 
Filial relations are the highest type of friendship. 
But familiarity must be chastened by reverence, a 
quality strangely lacking in our national charafter. 
It would seem as though in the boldness of our 
search for independence reverence had been largely 
forfeited. The Father addressed is in heaven. That 
is He is where holiness prevails to the utter exclu- 
sion of sin. So while we may tell out the whole 
mind it must be done with regard for the moral 
character of God and His eternal and infinite at- 
tributes ; with the familiarity, not of equals, but 
of lowly souls addressing sympathetic greatness 
and holiness- To dwell exclusively on either one 

[ 23 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

of these two considerations, God's Fatherhood or 
His infinite character, will result, on the one hand, 
in familiarity without reverence ; or, on the other, 
in reverence without familiarity. Familiarity with- 
out the discipline of reverence is desecrating im- 
pertinence, and reverence without the warmth of 
familiarity is chilling formalism. 
§ 2. Prayer should be comprehensive yet definite. In the 
Lord's Prayer each petition gathers into its grasp 
whole groups of desires, and all the petitions taken 
together give shelter under their hospitable shadow 
to every need and every aspiration that belong to 
human life. Great gifts are asked for — " Thy King- 
dom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in 
heaven." In such requests we even claim things 
for God as well as from Him. The dignity of each 
several petition is marked. We are taught to ex- 
pect royal gifts from our royal Father, gifts worthy 
of members of that royal family, the children of the 
Incarnation. The effeft of the persistent use of these 
comprehensive petitions has filtered right through 
human experience and taught man to expedt great 
things in all departments of life, in science, in in- 
vention, in literature. Man's best desires have be- 
come a true measure of his possibilities. 
The prayer that is shaped after the great model 
[ 24 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Speaking 

must not be timid or faltering, but bold and aspir- 
ing. It is a great mistake for one to be satisfied 
with praying for, say, purity instead of " Thy will 
be done on earth as it is in heaven." That is to ask 
for the crumb from the rich man's table when the 
rich man is beseeching you to sit by his side and 
share all that he has. Let us pray for purity by all 
means, though not as if it were a flower that grew 
in a bed all by itself. We can get one Christian 
grace only by aiming at all. 
No less marked than the comprehension is the de- 
finiteness of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer. 
Each is as clear cut as a crystal. There is no mis- 
taking its meaning. Like the articles of the Creed 
they are all too simple to be vague, and they carry 
their meaning on their face. It is a common fault 
in prayer to be content with a certain comprehen- 
sion that abjures definiteness. If the latter without 
the former can at the best make a charafter of but 
small stature, the former without the latter can 
make no character at all. Take the one matter of 
penitence. The mere admission of sinfulness, as in 
the prayer of the publican, is but the first moan of 
penitence. A riper penitence rises from the vague 
to the definite in declaring the sins, and not only 
the sinfulness, for which God's mercy is implored. 
[ 25 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

True comprehension implies detailed knowledge 
and minute accuracy. 

§ 3. Prayer should be social rather than individual in 
spirit. Our Father ; forgive us. The "our" and the 
"us" warn men never to think of themselves as 
units, or of religion as a private transaftion between 
God and the individual. God regards each as a part 
of y and never apart^w, the whole race, at the same 
time cherishing each part as though it were the 
whole. Consequently petitions for others ought to 
keep even pace with those for ourselves. A mo- 
ment's reflection shows how true philosophically 
the social form of prayer is. So closely is the web 
of human life woven that what touches one touches 
two at least, unless a man be a hermit, when he is 
as good as dead. Even supposing one were to pray 
for a spiritual gift for himself alone and receive it, 
it would at once become the property of others in 
some measure at any rate. It is an inflexible law 
that the righteousness or the evil, as the case may 
be, which dwells in a man, becomes forthwith the 
righteousness or the evil of the society to which 
he belongs. It is only common sense then to pray 
"give us" and "forgive us" rather than "give 
me" and "forgive me." 
Of course, this does not mean that "I" and "me" 

[ 26 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD — Speaking 

should never occur in our private prayers. They 
must do so. But I am to love my neighbour as my- 
self on my knees as well as in society. My neigh- 
bour is my other or second self to which I owe an 
equal duty of prayer with myself. To link "their" 
or "his" with "mine" on equal terms is really to 
say "our" ; to ask for others separately what I have 
already claimed for myself is to be social rather than 
individual in prayer. 

It would follow, then, that intercessory prayer is 
not a work of extraordinary merit but a necessary 
element of devotion. It is the simple recognition in 
worship of the fundamental law of human life that 
no man lives or dies alone. But intercession rises 
to sublime heights when it claims the privilege 
and the power for each child of God to gather up 
in his arms the whole family to which he belongs, 
and carry it with its multifold needs and its glori- 
ous possibilities into the presence of the common 
Father for blessing and protection. It is grand to 
feel that the Christian can lift, by the power of 
prayer, a myriad as easily as one, that he can hold 
in his grasp the whole Church as firmly as a single 
parish, and can bring down showers of blessing on 
an entire race as readily as the few drops needed 
for his own little plot. 

[ 27 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

§ 4. Prayer must maintain proper proportions. Spirit- 
ual needs are paramount, material are secondary. 
Out of seven petitions six bear upon the invisible 
foundations of life and the remaining one alone is 
concerned, dire&ly at any rate, with things mate- 
rial. It is further remarkable that the latter is as 
modest as the former are bold. The soul needs the 
whole of God's eternal Kingdom where the body 
requires but bread for the day. The Lord's Prayer 
does not teach asceticism, but it certainly con- 
demns luxury, and implies that the physical na- 
ture requires a minimum rather than a maximum 
of attention and care. 

With the vision of God above and the Christian 
seed-prayer well planted in the soul, man can dare 
to hope that his speech Godward will not waste 
itself in hollow echoes, but will travel straight up 
to the throne of Grace and bring a speedy an- 
swer. 



r 28 ] 



Chapter tt> 




Friendship with God — The Response 

j ROB ABLY the greatest result of the 
life of prayer is an unconscious but 
steady growth into the knowledge of 
the mind of God and into conform- 
ity with His will ; for after all prayer is not so 
much the means whereby God's will is bent to 
man's desires as it is that whereby man's will is 
bent to God's desires. While Jesus readily re- 
sponded to the requests and inquiries of His disci- 
ples His great gift to them was Himself, His per- 
sonality. He called His apostles that they "should 
be with Him." The all-important thing is not to 
live apart from God, but as far as possible to be 
consciously with Him. It must needs be that those 
who look much into His face will become like 
Him. Man refledts in himself his environment, es- 
pecially if he surrenders himself unreservedly to its 
influence. In the case of God, " in Whom we live 
and move and have our being," the influence is 
not passive, but aftive in impressing its character 
[ 29 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

upon us. It is not as the white of the land of snow 
which coats its animals with its own colour ; it is a 
Person. The complete vision of Christ will mean 
the complete transformation of man — "We shall 
be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is." If 
there were no other conceivable result from prayer 
than just this, it would even so be wonderful. Cer- 
tainly that which we treasure most in companion- 
ship with an earthly friend is not his counsel or 
service ; it is the touch of his soul upon our own ; 
it is the embrace of his whole being that wraps 
itself about our whole being. One may say then 
that the real end of prayer is not so much to get 
this or that single desire granted, as to put human 
life into full and joyful conformity with the will 
of God. 

This thought, beautiful and true as it is, would be 
too intangible and too great a tax upon faith, un- 
less man had some more or less definite and im- 
mediate recognition of his heavenward appeals. 
The Old Testament is a standing witness to God's 
consideration for human limitations and weakness. 
He sometimes gave man less than the best because 
of the latter's inability to receive the best, though 
He always gave as much as could be received, un- 
til at last He gave His Son. Now it is in this same 

[ 30 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— The Response 

way that He deals with His children of to-day. At 
first the lesser gifts are sought for and given, but 
as spiritual life ripens what man craves most for 
and what God is most eager to grant is that the 
Father's will may be wholly worked out in His 
child. Trust so grows that there can be no such 
thing as disappointment regarding the way God 
treats our petitions. 

Not Thy gifts I seek, O Lord; 

Not Thy gifts but Thee. 
What were all Thy boundless store 
Without Thyself? What less or more ? 

Not Thy gifts but Thee. 

This frame of mind, however, belongs to the to- 
morrow of most lives. For the present the lesser 
gifts are the best we are equal to. And it cannot 
be too often or too strongly said that God has di- 
rect answers to prayer for every soul that appeals 
to Him. But many fail to recognize the answer 
when it comes because of inattention. If God is 
to be heard when He speaks we must give heed. 
It is no less a duty to "wait still upon God" than 
it is to address Him in prayer. A one-sided con- 
versation is not a conversation at all. Conversation 
requires an interchange of thought. He who is one 

[ 31 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

moment the speaker must the next become the 
listener, intent upon the words of his companion. 
The expectation of an answer to prayer is laid 
down as a condition of there being one. 
§ i. Oftentimes God's answer is in the shape of an 
action rather than a voice. When we entreat a 
friend to do something for us, speedy compliance 
is a sufficient response to the request. If we are cer- 
tain of the person addressed no verbal assurance is 
required. The character of our friend is the guar- 
antee that the petition will be heeded. When, 
therefore, God is petitioned to do, we must look 
for an action rather than listen for a voice. 
There are some requests the answer to which re- 
turns with the speed of a flash of light, as, for in- 
stance, when we ask God to give us some Christian 
grace or disposition of heart. The giving comes with 
the asking.* A man may not be strong enough to 
retain the gift, but it actually becomes his before 
he rises from his knees. The rationalist will object 
to this, that such an answer to prayer is nothing 
more than the subjective effect of a given attitude 
of mind. Granted ; but that makes it none the less 
the direct work of God. Secondary or scientific 
causes exhibit to the observer the method by which 
* St. Mark xi: 24. 

[ 32 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— The Response 

God fulfils His purposes. The stone falls to the 
ground according to the law of gravitation, but 
God is behind the law controlling it. The distin- 
guishing feature of the Jewish mode of thought 
was the way in which it related all things to God's 
immediate adtivity. The Old Testament is the 
book of God's immanence. The present attitude 
of mind leads men to rest in all causes short of 
God, and even to forget the need of a Cause of 
causes. An earnest student of nature remarked 
upon leaving her microscope : "I have found a uni- 
verse worthy of God." She at least felt that a rev- 
elation of secondary causes was, at the same time, 
a new revelation of the God of causes. 
If it could be proved that all answers to prayer 
came according to the working of natural law, it 
would not eliminate God from the process, or have 
any sort of bearing upon the efficacy of prayer. All 
we know of God's method of work demonstrates 
His love of law ; and it would be no surprise, but 
rather what we should expecl, to find that all the 
unseen stretches of life are equally within the do- 
main of His law and order.* 
§ 2. But when occasion requires, the reply to speech 
Godward comes in the shape of a voice. In one sense 
* Cf. Liddon> Advent in St. Paul's, p. 22. 

[ 33 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

God is always speaking ; He is never still. Just as in 
prayer it is not we who momentarily catch His at- 
tention but He ours, so when we fail to hear His 
voice it is not because He is not speaking so much 
as that we are not listening. We may hear sounds, 
as a language with which we are not conversant, 
but be unable to interpret. Or perhaps we are in 
the position of one who sits in the summer even- 
ing when nature is instinft with music, — the chirp- 
ing of insedt life, the whispering wind, the good- 
night call of the birds, — deaf to the many voices, 
whereas a companion has ears for nothing else but 
what those voices say. The cause of the former's 
deafness is that his attention is wholly absorbed by 
other interests. We must recognize that all things 
are in God and that God is in all things, and we 
must learn to be very attentive, in order to hear 
God speaking in His ordinary tone without any 
special accent. Power to do this comes slowly and 
as the result of not separating prayer from the rest 
of life. A man must not stop listening any more 
than praying when he rises from his knees. No one 
questions the need of times of formal address to 
God, but few admit in any practical way the need 
of quiet waiting upon God, gazing into His face, 
feeling for His hand, listening for His voice. " I 
[ 34 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— The Response 

will hearken what the Lord God will say concern- 
ing me." God has special confidences for each soul. 
Indeed, it would seem as though the deepest truths 
came only in moments of profound devotional si- 
lence and contemplation. 

The written Word of God has special messages for 
the individual as well as a large general message 
for the entire Christian body. The devotional use 
of Holy Scripture is the means by which the soul 
reaches some of the most precious manifestations 
of God's will. By devotional use is meant such a 
study as has for its ultimate purpose an aft of wor- 
ship, or of conscious fellowship with Him. The 
Bible reveals not merely what God was, but what 
He is. Finding from its pages how He loved, we 
know how He loves ; learning how He dealt with 
or spoke to men, we perceive how He deals with 
and speaks to us. But our instruction in things 
divine must come to us from a Person rather than 
a book, though through a book perhaps. If we ap- 
proach the Bible as we would approach Bacon or 
Milton, merely as a collection of the wise thoughts 
and aftions of the dead, it will never sway the life to 
any large extent. Holy Scripture is separated from 
all other literature by the fa6l that it contains abso- 
lute spiritual truth and because its Author, as a liv- 
[ 35 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

ing Person, always stands behind it. Those who 
listen will hear the Holy Spirit saying to them, in 
direft application, the same things that lie on the 
open pages as the record of what was once said to 
men of old. Meditation or the devotional use of 
Scripture renders conscience, that organ of the soul 
by which God's voice is received by man, increas- 
ingly sensitive. The Old Testament days were full 
of men who could say " Thus saith the Lord," with 
the same assurance that they could report the 
speech of a comrade. Doubtless God had many 
ways of speaking to the prophets, but whatever 
these ways were and however special and singular, 
they were based originally on those by means of 
which He addresses all men in common. As a re- 
sult of the Incarnation "all the Lord's people are 
prophets" and the Lord has "put His Spirit upon 
them ; " and they, too, ought to be able to say 
"Thus saith the Lord." 

§3. A third way in which God makes His will 
known to man is by His silences, silences which 
are always eloquent. As experience has taught us, 
silence can convey a message just as readily as 
speech sometimes, or even more readily. The si- 
lence of the Easter tomb was the first voice that 
told of the Resurrection. The loved disciple read 

[ 36 ] 



FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— The Response 

the message of the orderly silence of the place 
where the Lord had lain ; "he saw and believed." 
Silence has expression and accent telling of sym- 
pathy, rebuke, anger, grief, as occasion may re- 
quire. The silence of Jesus before the importunate 
appeal of the woman of Canaan, was full of sym- 
pathy and encouraged her faith to rise to sublime 
heights. Whereas His silence before the accusa- 
tions of His enemies during His trial was so elo- 
quent as to establish His innocence even in the 
eyes of a Pontius Pilate. And if God is silent now 
at times when we long for some sign from Him, 
it is because by means of silence He can best make 
known to us His mind. His silence may mean that 
our request is so foreign to His will, that it may 
not be heeded without hurt to the petitioner. Or, 
on the other hand, He may be luring on our faith 
and inciting it to a more ambitious flight. Or, 
again, it may be that His silence is His way of 
telling us that the answer to our query or peti- 
tion lies in ourselves. God never tells man what 
man can find out for himself, as He never does 
what man can do for himself. The result of giving 
a person what he should earn is pauperism. As God 
will do, nay, can do, only what will enrich human 
nature, it would be a contradiction of Himself to 

[ 37 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

answer what we can find out for ourselves, or give 
what we can gain by our own efforts. Love lies 
within God's silences as their explanation.* The 
mother refuses to answer her child's questions be- 
cause the child by a little observation and thought 
can itself get at the truth, and truth won by strug- 
gle is the only truth that we really possess. If God 
is silent when we ask for new knowledge of His 
Person and His love, may it not be that it is be- 
cause we are substituting books about the Bible 
for an earnest study of the Bible itself, which con- 
tains a full answer to our prayer ? Or if, when day 
after day we have prayed for the conversion of a 
relative, no response comes, may it not be that we 
have never put ourselves at the disposal of God to 
be the instrument for working out what is at once 
our desire and His purpose ? At any rate, what- 
ever be the explanation of a silence in this or that 
special instance, God is never silent excepting 
when silence speaks more clearly than a voice. 
So the sure response comes to speech Godward in 

* J suppose that a constant vision of God would be an injury 
to almost all men> — that there are periods when e<ven utter 
scepticism is the sign of God^s mercy , and the necessary condi- 
tion of moral restoration. — R. H. Hutton, Theological Essays , 
p. 7 . 

[ 38 ] 









FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD— The Response 

an a6tion, or a voice, or a speaking silence. The 
persevering, faithful, attentive soul will never fail 
to discern God's answer to prayer, nor be disap- 
pointed in the quality of that answer when it 
comes. God is more ready to hear than we to 
pray, and it is His wont to give more than either 
we desire or deserve.* 
* Colleclfor Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. 



[ 39 ] 



Chapter b 



The Testing of Friendship 




jF course, friendship with God must 
be tried. Not only can true friendship 
stand any strain to which it may be 
put, but it even needs to be thus 
tested in order to be solidly set. It is like the knot 
that becomes more fixed and firm at each new 

■Hi 

pull of the cord. The faith and affedtion which 
will cling to a friend when all the forces of dis- 
union seem combined to bring about a separation, 
are so tempered by the experience involved as to 
defy every conceivable enemy, and to discover new 
depths of love and service in the fellowship that 
has been thus put to the test. To enter upon just 
why this should be, is not to the purpose. It is a 
faft and law of the life of fellowship between 
man and man, and man and God. The force that 
threatens to break up the conneftion between God 
and man, but by means of which that union may 
be consummated, is temptation. 
§ I. Temptation is always an opportunity, — There 

[ 40 ] 



THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 

are two kinds of testing — that which proves a 
thing to discover whether it is what it professes 
to be, and that which aims to bring out latent pos- 
sibilities in the thing tested. With the former there 
goes a sort of lurking suspicion that all may not be 
right, as when a bit of metal is tried by acid, or a 
big gun is proved by an excessive charge. When a 
test of this kind is over the thing that is tried is 
just what it was before, neither more nor less. No 
new quality is in the gift of the test. With the lat- 
ter, on the other hand, the result is different, as 
when the silver "from the earth is tried, and puri- 
fied seven times in the fire." The quartz goes into 
the furnace and a stream of unalloyed metal flows 
out ; or to seek still another illustration, — the pro- 
cess by which steel is tempered. Here new quali- 
ties are given by means of the testing ; to the silver, 
purity, and to the steel, hardness and elasticity. To 
this second form of testing belongs the element of 
trust rather than that of suspicion. The material 
is so good, that the workman has no doubt about 
its coming through the fire purer and more valu- 
able than ever. 

It is this kind of testing which the friends of God 
must undergo, the kind of testing which affords 
friends the very opportunity they need to become 

[ 41 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

better friends. It is not too much to say that man 
being what he is, there is no conceivable means 
excepting temptation, which would give to him 
just those elements which are necessary for his 
progress toward God. Jesus was "in all points 
tempted like as we are," primarily that His man- 
hood might reach its full measure, and this entailed 
such sympathy with the race as ensues upon a com- 
mon experience. Atonement means a unity with 
God which has been achieved, not by a divine fiat, 
but by a choice of the human will that has repelled 
the last attack of God's greatest enemy. 
It is always so that in scanning the harsh features 
of a refining process, the happy result of the pro- 
cess is blurred and forgotten. Temptation is surely 
an assault to be withstood, but at the same time it 
is an opportunity to be seized. Viewed in this light 
life becomes inspiring, not in spite but because of 
its struggles, and we are able to greet the unseen 
with a cheer, counting it unmixed joy when we 
fall into the many temptations which, varied in 
form, dog our steps from the cradle to the grave. 
The soldier who is called to the front is stimu- 
lated, not depressed ; the officer who is bidden by 
his general to a post of great responsibility, and so 
of hardship and peril, is thrilled with the joy of his 

r 42 ] 



THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 

task. An opportunity has been given him to prove 
himself worthy of great trust, which can be done 
only at the cost of great trouble. 
This is a true pifture of temptation. And the re- 
sult of it all is a nature invigorated and refined, a 
character made capable of close friendship with 
God, to say nothing of the unmeasured joy that 
is the attendant of nobility of soul and stalwart 
Christian manhood. 

§2. The majesty of conflict with temptation. — One 
is often depressed by the seemingly inglorious char- 
after of our temptations. They are so mean, petty 
and commonplace. If they had in them something 
to rouse in the heart that love of romance, that is 
a saving element in human nature, one could fight 
better. Now temptation has this very element. But 
spiritual eyes are needed to discern the glory of the 
commonplace, the romance of the inglorious. God 
has been trying with divine patience to convince 
men of this from the very beginning. The story 
of the first temptation of the first human beings, 
in its poetic dress points to the romance of life's 
struggle. Jacob's wrestling bout with the mysteri- 
ous being by the river's brink, is a view of the 
underside of any struggle against temptation, as 
God sees it, when the tempted one fights to win. 

[43 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

Above all in the narrative of the temptation of 
Jesus in the wilderness, is the majesty of conflift 
with evil made plain. It is a record which exceeds 
in dramatic splendour the story of "Faust," or the 
realism of " Pilgrim's Progress." And in it we ar- 
rive at the paradoxical truth that the temptations 
of Jesus were just as commonplace as ours, and 
that ours are just as glorious as His, — His, of 
course, having a completeness which none others 
could have, for the most complete temptation is 
the temptation of the most complete. 
Looking beneath the surface of the story, we find 
ourselves face to face with the well-known tempta- 
tions of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Wrapped 
in contemplation upon what His Divine sonship 
involved, He was driven into solitude, and tempted, 
as He worked out His life's plan, to substitute evil 
independence for good dependence, then to flee to 
the opposite extreme and substitute evil depend- 
ence for good independence, and finally to dis- 
regard the means in His zeal for a righteous end. 
These temptations are as common as humanity 
and as uninspiring as night. Could one have stood 
by when Jesus was struggling with them, doubt- 
less nothing more would have been seen than is 
visible to-day when some man in loneliness, with 
[ 44 ] 



THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 

his eyes lifted toward the hills, wins the mastery 
over himself and his unseen tempters. Yes, the 
Master's temptations were just as commonplace 
as ours. Why, then, this fine dressing up of the com- 
monplace ? Because, when in after days Jesus told 
His companions of His conflict and viftory, He 
saw with the illumination of retrospeft what at 
the moment of the struggle He could not see, the 
glory of it all. The story is not a fidtion of the 
imagination. It is a true pifture of what occurred, 
a revelation of the splendour that lies at the founda- 
tion of every spiritual contest, a record of literal 
truth not perceived at the time, but clear to the 
vision after all was over. 

"After all was over" — the mean and common- 
place incidents of to-day, form the raw material 
out of which is woven the romance of to-morrow. 
The ugliest fafts make the choicest romance after 
they have been tempered in the crucible of time. 
Ask a soldier how much romance there was when 
the fight was hot. The sublime in battle is visible 
only from the vantage ground of viftory. Often 
when the life of some humble and afflidted child 
of God comes to a close, we see what was hidden 
from our eyes during his days on earth — the hero- 
ism of his career. At first we esteem him "stricken, 

[ 45 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

smitten of God, and afflifted." Afterward we ad- 
mire the grandeur and largeness of the life that 
once seemed so narrow and lame. Before death the 
chara&er of the affliction claims our attention ; 
afterward the charafter of the afflifted ; now the 
ugly faft and then the glory ; " first that which is 
natural and afterward that which is spiritual." Con- 
sequently there are two methods of recording hu- 
man history — bare faft, concrete, grim, common- 
place ; its romance, abstraft, majestic and just as 
real. We need both kinds of description — Geth- 
semane with its agony and gouts of blood, and the 
wilderness with its dramatic imagery. Neither one 
is more real than the other. If the wilderness had 
its grim side, Gethsemane had its romantic side. 
The ideal is realized, when the real is idealized. 
Grant the truth of this — and who will gainsay it ? 
— and it follows that while the temptations of 
Jesus were as commonplace as ours, ours are as 
glorious as His. S. Paul saw it all quite plainly, 
when in radiant language he rolled out to his 
Ephesian friends that superb call to battle. "Be 
strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be 
able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our 
wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against 

[ 46 1 



THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 

the principalities, against the powers, against the 
world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual 
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." There 
is nothing in the whole of Scripture that makes life 
seem more splendid and glowing, and yet the oc- 
casion is one of extreme peril and hardship — the 
moment of temptation. It is not so that the scien- 
tific character of our age, with its darting electri- 
city and whirring wheels, forbids romance to lift its 
head. Glory of the highest type will live as long as 
dauntless human souls aspire to God, let the world 
be as matter of faft or as evil as it chooses. The 
only thing that can dim glory is the domination 
of sin in man. 

§ 3. So much for the splendid opportunity which 
temptation affords. How to meet it is what the 
story of the life of the Son of Man makes mani- 
fest. 

(a) It is noticeable that neither by precept nor ex- 
ample are we encouraged to pray for the removal 
of temptation. Once, it is true, Jesus expressed it 
as His desire that a cup of pain might pass from 
Him, but He conditioned His prayer — "not My 
will, but Thine, be done." God dfd not remove the 
cup, but what was better still He gave Him strength 
to drink it. A prayer of S. Paul's was treated in 

[ 47 3 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

like manner. The thorn in the flesh was not with- 
drawn, but it was transformed into a means of im- 
parting spiritual vigour — "My grace is sufficient 
for thee." It is said of Pascal, whose last yeaxs were 
full of agony ? that his malady became a new qual- 
ity of his genius and helped to perfeft it. Chris- 
tian character as well as great genius "has the 
power of elevating, transmuting, serving itself by 
the accidental conditions about it, however un- 
promising." * 

This being so, even Gethsemane is an encourage- 
ment to the man who is sore tried, to pray for 
power to transcend his trial rather than that it 
may be swept out of his life by the hand of God. 

' Tis life whereof our nerves are scanty 
More life and fuller that I want, 

and not exemption from trial. 
The lingering on in life of a temptation, which, 
if not born of past sin, at any rate has been inten- 
sified by self-indulgence, affords us our only chance 
of expressing penitence to God for failure in loy- 
alty to Him in this respedt or that. How can the 
man, in whom the fires of passion are dead, ex- 
press before God his sorrow for sins against purity 

* Walter Pater. 

[ 48 ] 



THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 

in days that are gone ? It is easy to conceive of such 
a person entreating God to give him back his temp- 
tation, that, by a reversal of former decisions, he 
may prove the reality of his penitence. So far as 
we can see, the one chance a man has of regain- 
ing a lost virtue, is through the very temptation 
by means of which he was robbed of it. Excessive 
resistance wins back, slowly but surely, what was 
lost by excessive indulgence. What is needed is not 
freedomynwz but freedom in temptation. This lat- 
ter is possible for every Christian. 
(b) Freedom in the life of temptation is achieved 
by meeting every enticement to sin with an upward 
rise toward virtue. It is quite inadequate to beat off 
temptation. We must spoil the strong man and 
possess ourselves of his goods. One sad feature of 
life is that we always undershoot the mark, and 
for the most part perfection in purpose results in 
nothing better than mediocrity in achievement. 
It is the sure fate of the man that is contented to 
view temptation merely as an invitation to hell 
which must be declined, that he will yield at least 
occasionally to the sin to which he is tempted. 
Only he who flings himself upward when the pull 
comes to drag him down, can hope to break the 
force of temptation. Temptation may be an invi- 

[ 49 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

tation to hell, but much more is it an opportunity 
to reach heaven. At the moment of temptation sin 
and righteousness are both very near the Christian ; 
but of the two the latter is the nearer. 
Walk in the spirit and you put yourself in such a 
position as to be unable to fulfil the lusts of the 
flesh. Meet the negation of sin with the affirmation 
of righteousness. When Satan challenges you to 
wrestle with him, turn about and wrestle with 
God for a blessing. 

(c) There is no reason to be afraid of temptation, 
that is to say if it is not a temptation into which 
we have entered unnecessarily, but one that is con- 
sequent upon the fulfilment of duty. God does not 
allow us to be tempted beyond our powers. But 
this is not all. Our fearlessness should show itself 
in our attitude. We must meet our temptations 
face to the foe. The temptations of Jesus never 
struck Him from behind but always smote Him 
in the face. There is only one kind of temptation 
which we are advised to run from, and that is the 
temptation to fleshly lust. Evasion is for the most 
part a sign of defeat, not of victory. The man who 
would gain freedom in temptation must be 
One who never turned his back, but marched breast for- 
ward. 

[ 50 ] 



THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 

With this thought we leave the subjeft of temp- 
tation, that strange mystery which proves man and 
makes him less unworthy of friendship with God, 
which is at once an opportunity and a snare, glori- 
ous and commonplace. 



[ 51 ] 



Chapter bf 



Knitting Broken Friendship 




UT the best of us do not always rise 
to the opportunity which temptation 
presents. A gust comes for which we 
are not prepared, and we are swept 
off our feet. And the earliest penalty of sin visits 
the transgressor simultaneously with its commit- 
tal — that depressing sense of loneliness and separa- 
tion from God that has been the bitter experience 
of every one, and that is so graphically represented 
in the story of the first aft of disobedience. Every 
one who does wrong, by the deed of wrong itself, 
hides himself from God just as Adam and Eve did. 
Sin is afting apart from God, a withdrawing of our 
allegiance from Him, an ignoring of His voice, a 
snapping of the bonds of friendship. 
When this unhappy experience occurs what are 
we to do to have the breach between ourselves and 
God filled up and fellowship with Him re-estab- 
lished ? It would seem natural to answer that as 
soon as we perceive that we have fallen we should 
[ 52 ] 



KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP 

pick ourselves up and go on our way without fur- 
ther thought about the dead past. It is out of our 
reach ; it cannot be recalled, and to dwell upon it 
is disastrous. 

A man who has exercised a wide influence over 
English thought declared sin to be "not a monster 
to be mused on, but an impotence to be got rid 
of. All thinking about it, beyond what is indis- 
pensable for the final effort to get rid of it, is 
waste of energy and waste of time. We then enter 
that element of morbid and subjeftive brooding in 
which so many have perished. This sense of sin, 
however, it is also possible to have not strongly 
enough to beget the firm effort to get rid of it." * 
Probably of the two dangers mentioned by Mat- 
thew Arnold, the latter is the greater in these 
days in which an "amiable opposition" to sin as 
merely a pardonable flaw in human nature is so 
widely taught. 

Whatever risk there may be in looking sin squarely 
in the face, and however difficult we find it to strike 
the mean between morbid brooding and a total dis- 
regard for the past, there never yet was a man who 
achieved the royal dignity of Christian character 
without a painful and thoroughgoing grappling 
* Matthew Arnold, St. Paul a?id Protestantism. 

[ 53 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

with his former self. Men may strive to forget the 
past by weaving about themselves a web of absorb- 
ing interests. But a day of reckoning must come, 
as it came to Adam and Eve in "the cool of the 
day," as it came to Jacob as he wrestled for better 
things that night by the plunging stream, as it 
came to S. Peter when he went out and sowed 
the seed of a chastened charafter in scalding tears. 
Were relief from the haunting memory of badness 
the only thing to be considered, a calm, fearless 
scrutinizing of sins committed is the one cure. 
The way to forget sin is to remember it before 
God — yes, even to the deliberate raking over the 
ashes of the days that are gone lest some fault should 
escape observation. A sense of sinfulness is the earli- 
est indication of awakening holiness. It seems as 
though the common idea concerning the repent- 
ance of the Publican in the story of the Publican 
and Pharisee, as told by the Master, were short 
of the truth. Surely there is no ground for think- 
ing that Christ commends the penitence of the 
Publican, who expressed his sorrow by saying 
" God be merciful to me, a sinner," as being ideal. 
Far from it. Poor and weak and young as was this 
appeal, it was infinitely more valuable in the sight 
of God and efficacious than the finely phrased self- 

[ 54 ] 



KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP 

laudation of the Pharisee. Penitence rises from a 
sense of sinfulness to a recognition of sins. 
It is not hard to perceive why this must be. The 
past strikes its roots into the present, and until in 
some true sense the past has been undone it is 
bound to poison the motives and deeds of to-day. 
Of course when a thing is done it is done. No 
amount of effort can undo it in the sense of oblit- 
erating it from history. But it is not only possible 
but necessary that in intention it should be undone 
and that so far as can be its evil consequences 
checked. With the aid of the imagination and the 
will the life that has been lived apart from God 
may be lived over again with Him. This in His 
sight is to undo it, for the motive is the deed, and 
intention is the most powerful of realities. 
But this is not all. It is a law of life governing all 
fellowship that transparent frankness is the only 
atmosphere in which friendship can exist. A wrong 
committed ought to be followed by full admission 
of the deed. And it is further noticeable that this 
admission is not dependent upon whether or not 
the person wronged is conscious of the wrong. 
Prudence demands, though not nearly so widely 
a^ is commonly supposed, that under certain con- 
ditions a sin against society should not be publiclv 
[ 55 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

confessed or even made known to the person chiefly- 
concerned. But where this happens the penitent 
should feel silence as a weighty penance, and long 
for a day when he can throw open his life so that 
he will be seen to be just what he is. We are only 
what we are in the sight of God. It is a grief to 
many a holy man that because of his secret sins he 
is better thought of than he deserves ; and he will 
hail the day when all that is hidden will be un- 
covered and made known, so that with the last 
veil torn from his character he will be able to join 
unreservedly in free and humble fellowship with 
all men. 

No Christian man has any more warrant for try- 
ing to "dissemble or cloak" his sins before his 
fellow-men than he has for trying to do the same 
thing before God. To rejoice when we see others 
attributing to us qualities which we do not possess, 
or to congratulate ourselves when we escape de- 
tection — or at least when we think we do, for as 
often as not men see our faults when we think 
they do not — upon the committal of some sin, is 
to deepen that line of deceit that furrows most 
characters. There is no social quality quite so splen- 
did as transparency. It is said by one * well quali- 
* H. Scott Holland. 

[ 56 ] 



KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP 

fied to speak of Mr. Gladstone that " the man in 
him leapt forward to express itself with transpar- 
ent simplicity. If he were subtle he showed at once 
why he wanted to be subtle. And in spite of every- 
thing that could be said about his intellectual sub- 
tlety, it remains that to the very last the dominant 
note of his character was simplicity — the simpli- 
city of a child ; with the child's naive self-disclo- 
sure, the child's immediate response to a situation, 
without cloak or disguise." 

Now it is just this simple, childlike transpareney 
that the Christian must cultivate in every respect. 
When it so happens to a man that he may not 
tell his wrong-doing to the person immediately 
wronged, then let him go to some spiritual friend, 
or to his pastor, who stands as the representative 
of Christian society, as well as the ambassador of 
Christ, and share with him his grief. 
The exception referred to above — where an open 
confession would result in social injury — does not 
at all alter the faft that perfect frankness alone 
makes fellowship possible. More often than not 
when one friend tells another of some piece of petty 
meanness by which friendship has been marred, 
the injured party already knows all about it. The 
confession is not made to give information, but to 

[ 57 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

open up the soul that has sinned so that the pro- 
cess of healthy social life may be free to work again. 
It is not wholly explicable, but it is a law "which 
governs human intercourse. 

Precisely in the same way this law works in the 
life of fellowship with God. He knows more about 
our sins than we can tell Him. But by telling them 
over, their occasion, their guilt, before Him, the 
soul is new-born into His love, and the warmth of 
His compassion melts the emotions. This is a first 
requisite in genuine personal religion — frankness 
before God ; and frankness among men is second 
only to it. 

In requiring perfeft openness of life from men 
God asks only what He gives. He is Light. There 
is no knowledge of His Person which man is capa- 
ble of grasping which He does not offer. He tears 
open His bosom and reveals the most sacred depths 
of His being. He asks man to do likewise that fel- 
lowship may follow. 

So far we have considered what man should do 
when, whether for a moment or for years, he has 
walked apart from God. He must review the past 
and in intention live it over again with God, turn- 
ing his back upon everything that is amiss. But 
this alone is incomplete. The heart must receive 

[ 58 ] 



KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP 

some sort of assurance that the work of penitence 
is acceptable in God's sight. There is no thirst of 
the soul so consuming as the desire for pardon. A 
sense of its bestowal is the starting point of all 
goodness. It comes bringing with it, if not the 
freshness of innocence, yet a glow of inspiration 
that nerves feeble hands for hard tasks, a fire of 
hope that lights anew the old high ideal so that it 
stands before the eye in clear relief, beckoning us 
to make it our own. To be able to look into God's 
face and know with the knowledge of faith that 
there is nothing between the soul and Him is to 
experience the fullest peace the soul can know. 
Whatever else pardon may be, it is above all things 
admission into full fellowship with God. It is not 
a release from certain penalties which the natural 
course of sin entails, though it brings with it power 
and wisdom to endure and to use penalties so that 
they become means by which lost virtues are re- 
stored and the whole character reinvigorated. The 
sense of fellowship comes out with singular force 
when for the first time the pardoned soul leaps 
out from under a weight of sin. The joy of prayer, 
the fearless approach to God, the contemplation of 
His personal love — all this testifies to what pardon 
is. The absolution of the dying robber on Calvary 

[ 59 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

was not merely an admission into Christ's privi- 
leges, but a call to His fellowship and a speedy call 
at that — " To-day shalt thou be with Me in Para- 
dise." 

The first awakening of the soul to a sense of par- 
don makes this very vivid. But somehow as time 
goes on and repeated falls on the upward climb 
discourage the soul, the difficulty of grasping God's 
pardon seems to increase. Confession is made and 
sorrow is felt, but God's face seems hidden behind 
a cloud. Then is it comforting to remember that 
all clouds are earthborn. The trouble is that we 
reflect our own impatience and discouragement up 
into the life of God. Because we chafe under our 
almost imperceptible progress we imagine God 
does the same. His first absolutions were full and 
generous, but how can these later ones be so ? Surely 
they must be grudgingly bestowed. So we argue, 
and the latest forgiving message of God, a message 
as strong and full as the first, falls upon listless ears. 
The absolution that comes to the penitent after 
the seventy-times-seven repetitions of a sin is all 
that the first one was. Absolution is never less than 
absolution. It always admits to fellowship so com- 
plete that it could not be closer. 

[ 60 ] 



Chapter fcif 



Friendship in God 




JRIENDSHIP is not only with God 
but also in God. Fellowship with God 
has for its corollary fellowship with 
man in God. And the latter in the 
greatness of its dignity and privilege is second only 
to the former. The religion of Christ does not al- 
low of one without the other. The Church, which 
is the divinely ordered means by which man is ad- 
mitted into and sustained in his fellowship with 
God, is also the ideal society of men. God never 
considers men apart from, but always as a part of, 
a great social order — a social order that is not a 
concourse of independent units, but a body instinct 
with life, a society which is not an organization 
but an organism. The description of our relation- 
ship to one another is couched in the same terms 
that tell of our relationship to Christ — "members 
one of another," "members of Christ." 
It is God's will that the Church should be cotermi- 
nous with society, and that the unity of life thus 
[ 61 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

produced should make the " communion of saints " 
a reality on earth and not a mere theory. Past years 
have seen much earnest straining to gain a truer con- 
ception of God, that fellowship with and love for 
Him might be according to His will. All this theo- 
logical effort will be lost, unless it is followed up 
by a no less strenuous effort to make the brother- 
hood of man a faft. The Master gave a new com- 
mandment of love, a commandment new not in 
essence but rather in intensity and comprehension. 
After the injunftion to love God comes the equally 
unequivocal injunftion to love man — " Thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself." That is to say, per- 
sonality whether in ourselves or in others is to re- 
ceive the highest reverence and consideration, and 
that without any partiality. Humanity being full 
of diversity, this commandment requires a most 
thorough and intelligent study of society and its 
elements. Heresies concerning God have been and 
are destructive of unity; but heresies concerning 
man are productive of almost equal mischief. If 
the first part of the commandment of love calls us 
to a study of theology, the second demands a study 
of sociology — an old science under a new name. 
It is worth while noting that the Apostle who 
earned the name of "the Divine," or as we would 

[ 62 j 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

say "the Theologian," by reason of his familiar 
acquaintance with the deep things of God, was 
the same who felt that the appeal most worth ur- 
ging with the scant breath of extreme old age was, 
that men should love one another ; and he repeats 
this simple phrase until the world wonders— "My 
little children, let us not love in word, neither in 
tongue, but in deed and in truth." 
But it must never be forgotten that human fellow- 
ship and friendship must under the best of condi- 
tions be seftional and shallow, and under the worst, 
disastrous, unless it be "in Christ," that is, in God. 
The true ideal of human fellowship is realized only 
thus. And it is such a unity as would be the out- 
come of fellowship in Christ, for which the Mas- 
ter prayed at the last. Ecclesiastical unity does not 
necessarily produce unity of life, though the latter 
must include the former in some true sense. Chris- 
tian unity has a twofold basis, the love of God and 
the love of man. This differentiation in the com- 
mandment of love, is of Christ's own making, and 
cannot be ignored by His followers. 
In considering the ideal human fellowship it is vital 
to remember that the spiritual, here as elsewhere, 
is built upon the natural, the spiritual entering into, 
interpreting and developing the natural. And when 

[ 6 3 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

the word "natural" is used, that which is purely 
accidental and artificial in life is not meant, but 
that which is fundamental and belongs to the very 
constitution of humanity. For instance, trade rela- 
tions and conventional institutions of whatever 
kind are evanescent. To use them for a foundation 
is to build on sand. An eternal fabric cannot gain 
coherence from a creation of man's whim or genius. 
Indeed the institutions of commerce as well as all 
official intercourse, can be construfted with effec- 
tiveness, not to say justice, only when built upon 
the recognition of the dignity of humanity and the 
sacredness of personality, with equality of consid- 
eration for each. And herein lies the solution of the 
whole social problem in all its ramifications. 
The fundamental relationship of life is such as 
springs out of that common humanity, which, in 
the last analysis, is a man's only absolute posses- 
sion, be he prince or pauper, wise or ignorant. And 
this humanity of ours is a precious possession, not 
always perhaps for what it has aftually become, but 
for what it is in process of becoming, or, it may 
be, only because of those latent possibilities which 
the Incarnation has declared to be contained in 
that which is born of woman. Once armed with 
this thought, Kant's valuable negative advice never 

c 6 4 ] 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

to treat humanity as a thing* but always as a per- 
son, never as a means merely but always as an 
end, is in order. 

It is one of the evils springing out of an intercourse 
that is so largely official, that on all sides men are 
valued and thought of, only or chiefly on the side 
of economic efficiency. That is to say, they are 
treated with only that amount of consideration 
which is due a machine. A simple illustration will 
suffice. The mistress of a household on coming 
down stairs one morning was greeted by her maid, 
who was dusting in the hall, with a " Good morn- 
ing," and, "Do you know, Mrs. Z , that I 

have been with you five years to-day ? " " Have 
you ? " was the response, " You have left some dust 
on that chair." The mistress boasted doubtless that 
she had "reminded her servant of her place." No 
further comment is needed. The maid thought her- 
self to be a person, but was reminded that she was 
a thing. 

Again, if the baker is thought of as a mere con- 
venience for baking bread, all demands he may 
make beyond those which will enable him to pro- 

* That is called a thing to which no event can he imputed as 
an aclion. Hence every objecl devoid of freedom is regarded as 
a thing. — Kant y Mctaphysic of Ethics. 

[ 65 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

duce good bread, will be fiercely contested. The 
conditions under which the bread is baked are a 
paltry incident, provided they do not in any way 
discommode the consumer, and the claim made 
by the journeyman baker for opportunity and 
means to realize the God-given ambitions of his 
manhood, ambitions which perchance have no- 
thing to do with baking bread, is scouted in much 
the same way that a request to decorate a machine 
with gold trimmings would be scouted. Of course 
it is as wrong to ignore the former's claim, as it 
would be right to ignore the demand for expen- 
sive and useless embellishments for a piece of ma- 
chinery ; for one is a person and the other is a 
thing. 

It is because men have been thought of as things, 
that there are such plague-spots on the social body 
as sweatshops. All movements that compel the at- 
tention of the consumer to a recognition of his re- 
lation to the producer as a person, are worthy of 
the most careful study and the highest commenda- 
tion. Preferential dealing, that is to say, dealing 
preferably with such merchants as we know to 
have humane regard for those who produce and 
handle the goods offered for sale, is merely a pass- 
ing phase of the attempt to recognize as persons 
[ 66 ] 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

those who, though far removed from us, yet touch 
our lives and minister to our necessities ; and the 
movement deserves support and encouragement 
because of the principle which actuates it. When 
life was less complex than at present, and the en- 
trepreneur and middleman did not exist to obscure 
the relationship between consumer and producer, 
it was easier to realize the responsibility of the one 
toward the other than it is now. However, it is of 
elementary necessity that men should learn that 

the accident which hides one section of societv 

j 

from the easy observation of another, does not 
lessen one whit the mutual responsibility which 
each bears towards the other. Nor does the diffi- 
culty of gathering information afford an excuse. 
In these days of pertinacious investigation and or- 
ganized experience, there is no set of conditions so 
complex as to baffle ultimately the determined in- 
vestigator of social phenomena, or to escape satis- 
factory adjustment. 

Once again, the cry of the workman for a living 
wage, is but an indication that the labourer is com- 
ing to a realization of the dignity and fullness of 
manhood, and is inviting others to share in this 
discoverv of himself. Who can turn a deaf ear to 
his appeal, excepting those who denv a man's right 

[67 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

to realize himself? The doftrine of the average 
wage, that is, the wage which is determined by a 
"brazen law" of one kind or another, whether 
that to which the name of Ricardo is attached or 
some other, equally unmanageable, is fast giving 
place to that of the living wage. The living wage 
is the evolution of the average wage ; the former 
phrase declares that men are requiring official deal- 
ings to be more humane than of yore, as well as 
that the law of wages is not an almighty tyrant to 
which society must bow, but a law which is more 
or less obedient to the diftates of man's will. There 
are those among political economists who now 
maintain it to be more reasonable to claim, that 
prices must conform to wages, than wages to prices. 
It is worth while adding in this connexion that the 
living wage is bound to be progressive, as the duty 
of treating men as persons and not as things, comes 
to be more firmly imbedded in the public con- 
science. Some persons are ready to admit the jus- 
tice of the theory of Christian democracy, though 
unwilling to accept many of its logical conclusions. 
The promulgation of the principle of democracy 
in its mildest form, creates new desires or awakens 
dormant ones in the undermost men, and of course 
provision must be made for satisfying these, else 
[ 68 ] 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

the doctrine which gave the desires birth is hide- 
ously cruel. A living wage some years since, had 
the phrase obtained in the language, would have 
signified for the most part a wage sufficient to sus- 
tain animal life. That is, the wage-earning man 
would have been recognized as an animal but not 
a person. Or perhaps it would have meant a wage 
capable of creating economic efficiency, in which 
case it would have indicated that the wage-earner 
was viewed as a thing. Now the idea underlying 
a living wage is a wage sufficient for the sustenance 
of human life, of life in which there is room for 
freedom of choice, and where the whole man is 
taken into consideration. 

It is to the credit of society, that so much earnest- 
ness is being expended to-day in the effort to hu- 
manize the various official relationships of life. But 
it is a cause for shame, on the other hand, that 
among Christian men there should have been so 
deplorable a falling away from elementary Chris- 
tian principle, as to make this effort necessary. Let 
it suffice for the present to insist that until men 
more generally recognize their fellows, whatever 
be their position in life, to be persons and not 
things, wide fellowship at any rate is an utter 
impossibility. And it is from this point that all at- 

[ 6 9 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

tempts to solve social problems must take their 
beginning. It might prove a useful experiment if 
occasionally, for a short period, we were to test 
our love for others by loving ourselves as we love 
them, treating ourselves as we treat them. If it so 
happened that we were living reasonably near to 
the Golden Rule, our conduit would not have to 
be materially, if at all, changed to do this ; but if 
we happened, on the other hand, to be treating 
our neighbour as a thing when the experiment 
took place, there is no doubt that we should im- 
mediately become so unhappy and full of pain, as 
to be incapable of prolonging the experience. 



[ 70 ] 



Chapter toiii 




Friendship in God (continued ) 

|HE official temper of mind is by no 
means the only bar to wide fellow- 
ship. Exclusiveness and tempera- 
mental dislike are responsible for a 
great many sins against brotherly love, and must 
be fought down by every true follower of our Lord. 
When men are left to themselves, they gravitate 
into mutually exclusive groups composed of con- 
genial classes or of congenial types. But Chris- 
tianity steps in and breaks up these little sets, in 
order to blend them into one varied and splendid 
whole. The vision which S. John had revealed to 
him, was humanity in all its variety — " out of every 
nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues" 
— but at perfedt unity with itself, a complete and 
harmonious family. 

§ i. Probably there is no temper of mind more dif- 
ficult to master than that of exclusiveness. In the 
evolution of society class differentiations have come 
into being, differentiations which, at the time of 

[ 71 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

their appearance, may have been a necessary phase 
of progress, but which, in the development of Chris- 
tian thought, should pass away. It would not be 
right or wise to contend for the immediate oblit- 
eration of all artificial distinctions in life, for con- 
ventionalities are often social safeguards and have 
their place in civilization. But surely the earnest 
disciple of Jesus must array all the forces at his 
command against the continuance of customs that 
have been separated from their usefulness, and are 
perpetuated only to be stumbling blocks to human 
fellowship. 

The worth of conventionalism has for its supreme 
test the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. When He 
quieted the strife of the disciples, who were filled 
with the ignoble lust of domination, He inaugu- 
rated a new social order. " He that is the greater 
among you, let him become as the younger ; and 
he that is chief, as he that doth serve." The old 
order made kings the recipients of much service, 
the new calls them to give much service ; the old 
order led men to strive for honour, the new inspires 
them to avoid honour unless bound up with an en- 
larged opportunity to serve ; the old order prized 
whatever privileges set men above and apart from 
their fellows, the new seeks everything that will 

[ 72 ] 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

bring them nearer to their fellows. So merit and 
reward, privilege and responsibility, greatness and 
service must never be separated. Where they have 
been separated in the past, as well as where they 
are in the present, the result is exclusiveness. Men 
cling to prerogatives which in common justice they 
have no real claim upon, beyond the flimsy plea of 
hereditary right and the permission of society. Out 
of this have grown those groups of persons who, 
though possessing nothing but a very common hu- 
manity indeed, would, from a sense of superiority 
derived from a name, or from the false prestige 
given by wealth and social position, withhold their 
fellowship from all but a seledt few. If men could 
but realize the cramping influence on character of 
exclusiveness, how quickly would they hasten to 
divest themselves of every trace of the vice of snob- 
bishness ! Dives lived in exclusive society after 
death because he did so before death. He was no 
farther from Lazarus in the other world than he 
was in this; the gulf created here was " fixed " 
there, that is all. And among the "losses of the 
saved" will be lack of capacity for wide fellow- 
ship. 

The dignity of humanity is so great that nothing 
can add to its greatness, excepting what ennobles 

[ 73 J 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

human nature itself. Wealth, social position, mere 
intellectual attainment, no more deserve deference 
or homage, than do the tatters of a pauper or the 
ignorance of a dolt. No man insults human nature 
or demeans his personality so much as he who bows 
down to these accidents, excepting onlv the man 
who receives homage on the ground not of what 
he is but of what he has. We mav neither pav 
homage to, nor receive it for, any of those things 
which belong merely to time and of which death 
will strip us bare ; though piety, spiritual wisdom, 
and all forms of moral power, always and every- 
where, demand homage and reverence. 
The true basis on which Christian fellowship is 
begun and maintained, is our common humanity 
— that which is essential and not that which is 
accidental. Our Lord drew men to Himself and 
had human fellowship with them, by virtue of the 
completeness and attractiveness of His splendid 
manhood. He had none of the accidents of life to 
use, and He was not weak without them. He was 
the most refined among men, and vet He found 
companionship among the peasant folk. Social dif- 
ferentiations did not enter into our Lord's reckon- 
ing. He ignored them, reaching through them and 
past them. It is touching to remember that one 
[ 74 ] 






FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

of the earliest companionships in Paradise of the 
human soul of Jesus, was the resumption of almost 
His last intercourse on earth. As the soul, of the 
penitent outlaw and robber, "pale from the pas- 
sion of death," went into the society of Paradise, 
it was received and welcomed by the Man, Christ 
Jesus. 

It is a myth that the wise and cultured must con- 
fine their fellowship to the wise and cultured.* By 
means of literature men and women of high privi- 
lege, have joined hands with those whose lives were 
bare of everything but charafter — with Adam Bede 
and with Uncle Tom. If this is possible with the 
creations of fiftion, it is capable of being widely true 
in aftual life. The richest human nature is often 
found in the most obscure places, as the experience 

* Cfi Browning s verses in Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, 
vohere the result of false culture, or the abuse of culture, is 
referred to : — 

Man is made in sympathy with man 

At outset of existence, so to speak ; 

But in dissociation, more and more, 

Man from his fellovo, as their lives advance 

In culture ; still humanity, that \r born 

A mass, keeps flying off, fining avuay 

Ever into a multitude of points, 

And ends in isolation, each from each. 

[ 75 ] ' 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

of every social worker from Edward Denison to the 
resident in the newest "settlement," will testify. 
True refinement is not the result of paltry conven- 
tionalism, the flimsy creation of an artificial soci- 
ety ; true refinement is the inalienable possession 
of that character in which the Spirit of God rules, 
in which the material is made the handmaid of the 
spiritual. At first men went out into the highways 
of the city, armed with their privileges, thinking 
that they had everything to give. But they soon 
learned that this spirit could only end in conde- 
scension, which is fatal to fellowship, for fellow- 
ship means give and take, and that the poor and 
unprivileged had much to give. Unless representa- 
tives from the different classes of society are con- 
tributing their special gifts to our lives, life is poor 
indeed. Wealth of fellowship consists not in num- 
bers, but in variety. 

When men reach out for wider fellowship, they 
must not forget that no man ever yet won his fel- 
lows through his own interests. He must, by the 
subtle power of sympathy, dive beneath the surface 
of other lives and court their interests. Even God 
failed to win men, until He made man's concerns 
wholly His own by becoming Man. " For ye know 
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though 

c 76 ] 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, 
that ye through His poverty might become rich," 
§ 2. Temperamental dislike is another obstacle to 
Christian fellowship to be conquered. It is some- 
thing found wherever human nature is. And men 
commonly excuse quarrelsomeness, rudeness and 
other unchristian condudt on this score, though the 
excuse is by no means valid. Probably all of us are 
afflifted with a natural antipathy to certain kinds of 
temperament, but at least we need not humour it. It 
was part of God's design, that human society should 
be enriched by variety of disposition. That is a poor 
garden which contains but one kind of flower, beau- 
tiful as its blossom may be. True beauty consists in 
variety ; and monotony is the height of ugliness. It 
is a reason for thankfulness that human nature is so 
wonderfully diversified that no two human beings 
are exaftly alike, and that there is a whole gamut 
of temperamental difference in the race. 
Now it is a part of the work of Christianity, to 
reconcile dispositions that are naturally antipa- 
thetic and jarring. And the process by which this 
is brought to pass, is probably one of the most bene- 
ficial disciplines to which men are subjected. The 
Church is a great mixing bowl, in which all this 
vast variety is brought into close touch and blended 

[ 77 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

together into a harmonious whole. "The very pur- 
pose of the one Church for all the men of faith in 
Jesus is that the necessity for belonging to one 
body — a necessity grounded on divine appoint- 
ment — shall force together into a unity men of all 
sorts and different kinds ; and the forces of the new 
life which they share in common are to overcome 
their natural repugnance and antipathies, and to 
make the forbearance and love and mutual help- 
fulness which corporate life requires, if not easy, 
at least possible for them." * 
That society is at once the most beautiful and the 
most powerful which is composed of the largest 
variety of temperaments, exercising their various 
faculties in unity and mutual helpfulness. Some per- 
sons imagine that the most desirable parochial life 
is where all the parishioners are of one stripe, instead 
of that in which there is a finely disciplined diversity. 
A parish of dead uniformity would be comfortable 
but not educative, quiet but colourless and insipid. 
Unquestionably certain natures are so constituted 
as to irritate us every time we come near them. 
And unless we are very carefully on our guard we 
will not treat such persons justly or courteously, 
much less will we be ready to render them deli- 
* Gore on Ep/iesians, p. 189. 

[ 78 ] 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

cate service. Quite unconsciously we exhibit our 
temper of mind. There may be the determination 
not to allow our feelings to rise to the surface, but 
nevertheless before we know it we have done the 
mischief; and somehow the bitterness we entertain 
has been let loose, not by a word or a look, per- 
haps, but by some subtle telepathic or psychic in- 
fluence which opens the secret of our soul to our 
companion. There is nothing more infectious than 
a temper of mind. It seems to leap out of one soul 
and impart itself to another without heeding the 
ordinary laws of transmission. Anger, lust, suspi- 
cion, dislike, jealousy smirch not only the souls in 
which they lie restrained though not conquered, 
but others that come within the radius of their 
wide-reaching influence. 

Fortunately this power of infection is not confined 
to evil passions, but belongs even in a larger degree 
to those which are good. And herein lies the rem- 
edy for temperamental dislike. If we stop short at 
choking it down, we can never make a friend of 
one whose disposition is naturally repugnant to us. 
Sooner or later our dislike will crop out and a gulf 
be made. If, on the other hand, the dislike is dis- 
placed by generous, full love — love that is a force 
and not a mere emotion — fellowship, and eventu- 

[ 79 J 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

ally friendship, will become possible. There may 
be grounds often for our antipathies. Some people 
have the misfortune to be graceless, awkward and 
repellant ; others are unattraftive if not positively 
disagreeable to every one — bad-tempered, perhaps, 
or mischief-makers. To educate these in Christian 
fellowship is probably as large a public service as 
could be readily rendered. "It is no great matter," 
says Jeremy Taylor, * " to live lovingly with good- 
natured, with humble and meek persons ; but he 
that can do so with the froward, with the wilful, 
and the ignorant, with the peevish and perverse, 
he only hath true charity." 

§ 3. A third bar to Christian fellowship is what, for 
want of a better phrase, may be termed a weakness 
for interesting people. That is to say, the humanity 
that is within easy reach seems commonplace and 
uninteresting, so that men of our intimate acquain- 
tance often appear to be hardly worth while labour- 
ing for. Hence it is a common habit to reserve our 
best thought, our best manners and our best service 
for strangers, making little positive effort to love and 
serve those with whom we are thrown into daily 
contaft. Nowhere is human perversity more glar- 
ing than in the sad truth lurking behind the pro- 
* Works : Vol. <vii. 624. 

[ 80 ] 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

verb: "A prophet is not without honour, save in 
his own country and house." The value of those 
who stand nearest to us is lowered by means of 
their very nearness. On the other hand the per- 
sons who are outside our immediate circle, how- 
ever comprehensive it may be, seem to be more 
interesting than the very average folk who are 
our ordinary companions. We long for compan- 
ionship with men of this finer type. 
Of course this is all a delusion. Human nature is 
full of interest wherever we find it, that which 
is nearest as well as that which is farthest re- 
moved. The men we would like to know and 
serve, are no more worthy of attention than the 
men who stand shoulder to shoulder with us. But 
those who have the largest claim upon our atten- 
tion and service, are our immediate friends and 
neighbours. Indeed the only way to arm ourselves 
against disappointment, as the boundaries of our 
fellowship are enlarged, is so to attach ourselves to 
the people near at hand as to learn the true dig- 
nity of all human nature and the almost unfath- 
omable depths of every personality. Otherwise an 
acquisition in acquaintanceship will, after the first 
glow of novelty has worn off, only reveal one more 
uninteresting person. 

[ 81 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

§ 4. There is one other duty that ought to be at 
least touched upon in this conne&ion, though it 
has been referred to in a former chapter — the duty 
of praying for others. There is no more delicate 
service in the whole round of human aftion than 
that of intercessory prayer. It is so hidden as to 
have a special beauty on that account. While men 
are all unconscious that we are thinking of them, 
we fold our arms about them and bring them up 
before God for blessing and guidance. Intercessory 
prayer might be defined as loving our neighbour on 
our knees. The common objection, "What good 
can it do ? Will not God bless men just as much 
without our prayers as with them ? " seems to have 
a certain amount of weight. But a very little re- 
flection shows that it does not amount to much. 
Even though intercessory prayer did nothing more 
than put us who pray in a desirable frame of mind 
toward those for whom we pray, it would be an 
exercise of great value. However, as a matter of 
fa£l, it accomplishes much more than this. Besides 
making our feeling of fellowship stronger, it really 
brings something to those for whom we offer our 
petitions. Human life is as closely bound up on the 
spiritual as on any other side of our being. It is 
quite certain that if we withhold the duties of ser- 

[ 82 ] 



FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 

vice in other ways God does not supply our lack, 
so far as we can see, but human life suffers through 
our negledl. If all else in our experience is gov- 
erned by law, why should we believe that the spi- 
ritual part of life stands alone and is not affe&ed 
by spiritual service ? There is from analogy every 
reason to suppose, that those who are not prayed 
for suffer spiritual loss on that account. 
But the immediate point to be made is that the 
height of Christian friendship cannot be reached 
without intercession. It has been pointed out by a 
spiritual teacher * that it makes a great difference 
in our feelings towards others if their needs and 
their joys are on our lips in prayer ; as also it makes 
avast difference in their feelings towards us if they 
know that we are in the habit of praying for them. 
There is no chasm in society that cannot be firmly 
and permanently bridged by intercession ; there is 
no feud or dislike that cannot be healed by the same 
exercise of love. 

Here, then, as in all else, if we are to come any- 
where near the ideal we must lift our eyes to God. 
Friendship in God is possible only for those who 
bring society before God in prayer. 
# Canon Gore, 

[ 83 ] 



Chapter lx 



The Church in Prayer 




|HUS far little has been said of the 
more corporate aspeft of the spirit- 
ual life — of army movements, so to 
speak. Our minds have been chiefly 
on the duties of men in their individual capacity. 
Not that any one can ever behave so that he alone 
is affefted by his output of energy. Whether con- 
sciously or unconsciously every human being that 
breathes, according as he moves his will upwards 
or downwards, elevates or hinders his fellows. The 
most secret passages of life should be traversed 
with reference to others, in order that we may be 
ruled by that beautiful consistency which will en- 
able us to aft formally in public without readjust- 
ing our whole inner temper. There will be no 
wrench, no unnatural straining to become what 
we cannot be at a moment's notice, but on the 
contrary merely an exhibition under altered con- 
ditions of the spirit which has all along aftuated 
us. For instance, one who has not learned to pray 

[ 8 4 ] 



THE CHURCH IN PRAYER 

hard for others and to ponder over their welfare, 
cannot hope to speak to men with any force on 
spiritual topics. He has not cultivated the frame of 
mind that will give him power to do it. If he tries, 
his words will most likely be irreverent cant or an 
empty echo. It is only out of the fulness of the 
heart that the mouth can speak effective words. 
In no department of life is this more true than in 
corporate worship. The power of public worship 
is dependent upon and the outcome of healthy 
and faithful private worship, to say nothing of the 
rest of the personal life. Those who have true per- 
sonal religion will feel their life of devotion incom- 
plete without common prayer ; a growing desire 
for public worship is an index of a man's deepen- 
ing spirituality. On the other hand, when we hear 
men saying that they do not care for church ser- 
vices, that they can pray just as well at home, and 
so on, it is safe to conclude that whatever fine- 
spun theories they may hold, as a matter of fa£t 
they are suffering from spiritual atrophy, praying 
neither at home nor anywhere else. Private devo- 
tion whets the appetite for public worship. And 
those who are in intention true to fundamental 
Christian principles will not mistake the end of 
the Church's corporate worship. 

[ 85 j 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

The assembling of the congregation is something 
far larger than the creation of a public occasion 
for saying private prayers. There are numbers of 
persons who go through the whole service with- 
out a thought for any one but themselves, sucking 
the liturgy dry of whatever touches their own im- 
mediate concerns, but oblivious to those who kneel 
around ; and perhaps private manuals supply the 
place of the Prayer Book. Such persons squeeze 
into their own cup all the inspiration that a har- 
monious concourse of men carries with it, and 
make no return. Like the horse-leach's daugh- 
ters their cry is, " Give, give." Could anything be 
more selfish or more anomalous ? There is no ef- 
fort of imagination, no kindling of sympathy, no 
struggle to enter under the shadow of the prayer 
of the congregation, so that they are as completely 
alone as though they were in a desert place. 
Nor is public worship a device for rousing in peo- 
ple a devotional frame of mind, which will enable 
them to pray better by themselves. Doubtless one 
indireft effeft of the great dignity and beauty of 
liturgical worship, is to stimulate those who par- 
ticipate in it to a deeper devotion at home. But 
public worship is a climax, not a mere means to 
an end ; it is the culmination of private devotion, 
[ 86 ] 






THE CHURCH IN PRATER 

not its starting point. Without hidden spiritual 
effort, it is a phantom of the real thing ; with it, 
it is the matchless consummation of adoration, 
prayer and sympathy. Under the least satisfactory 
conditions the congregation gathered in God's 
house has marvellous dignity ; the unity of move- 
ment, the rich variety and the rhythm of liturgical 
expression characterize it as the most august of 
human assemblies. 

But the possibilities of the Church in prayer rise to 
their supremest height, when the congregation is 
rich with the fruits of personal religion. So closely 
woven are the public and the private phases of 
devotion that they are of a piece. The power of 
the former is due to the hours of secret prayer, 
the struggles with self, the nerving of the will — 
in short, all that hidden discipline and training 
that lie behind the veil of private life. Out of this, 
corporate worship emerges as effecl: rises out of 
cause. However great, then, the private life of de- 
votion is in which men pray to God in the guarded 
secrecy of their homes, it is only preparatory, lead- 
ing up to the service of the sanftuary. * Private 

* The writer does not hesitate to advise persons who are tem- 
porarily residing^ as is often the case during the summer *, where 
there is no Episcopal Church, to attend public worship, once a 

[ 87 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

prayer is the lesser, public the greater ; the former 
is the exercise of the individual members with 
special regard to their own development, the latter 
is the stately movement of the whole body in beau- 
tiful unison. Each member contributes to the 
whole what has been gained in private efforts ; 
each comes to give rather than to receive, or, if it 
may be so put, to receive through giving ; and of 
course a man can give only what he has gathered. 
The glimpses we have of heavenly worship* re- 
veal nothing but common worship. We see no in- 
dividuals standing apart from the throng, absorbed 
in their own little expression of praise. The ranks 
are unbroken, and one united and uniting impulse 
thrills the whole. The visions recorded by S. John 
are visions not merely of ideal worship in its re- 
stricted sense of spoken prayer and praise, but of 
the ideal life. The fundamental idea of common 
worship consists in dependence upon God and fel- 
lowship with man, and when all life is filled to the 
full with this twofold spirit, all life will be worship, 
and let it be said here with firm emphasis, that if 

Sunday at least, at the representative Evangelical place of 
worship of the community. Reading the Church service at 
home by one^s self is no substitute for public worship, 
* As e. g. in Rev. v. 11-14. 

[ 88 ] 









THE CHURCH IN PRAYER 

we do not lift up our life to the level of our prayers, 
eventually our prayers will be dragged down to 
the level of our life. Life in heaven is something 
more than one long Sunday service ; it is the use 
of all powers and faculties in the spirit of worship, 
worship representing the highest and finest temper 
of mind of which we have experience. So when 
we read the figurative language of S. John, we 
must remember that he is declaring under the 
symbolism of worship what the features of hea- 
venly life are — the conscious service of God in a 
harmonious human society. 

Similarly here on earth common worship is a sym- 
bol of true life as well as a means of sustaining it. 
The attention of the congregation gathered before 
the altar is fixed upon God, and no stronger indi- 
cation of the reality of brotherhood could be con- 
ceived than the visible assembly occupied in a com- 
mon exercise. When all our activities become 
saturated with the consciousness of God in His 
perfection, and with the fact of the oneness of 
Christ's mystical Body, formal worship will be no 
more a necessity. But that will be when heaven 
is reached, for which day there must be some little 
waiting yet. In the meantime it is vital that wor- 
ship, as we know it, should not be an excrescence 

[ 8 9 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

on life but a real part of it, part of it as truly as 
the deep, silent tide flowing between narrow banks 
is part of the same river which above and below is 
worried by rocks or widened into a lake. Public 
worship should represent perhaps the most con- 
centrated part of life, but nothing unnatural, noth- 
ing out of gear with work-a-day moments. Work 
should flow into worship as easily as the stream 
into the ocean. There should be, in all the busi- 
ness of life, the steady application of God's laws, 
and that underlying consciousness of His Person 
and Presence which, so far from detracting from 
the efficiency of our work or preventing full devo- 
tion to it, will intensify every energy. The melody 
of the song is emphasized and supported by the 
accompaniment, not lost in its multitude of sounds. 
Given this attitude of mind, and what a simple, 
natural thing praise with the lips becomes ! And 
how sublime the uprushing flood of hymnody from 
an assembly of men of like mind ! 
Again, public worship ought to be the highest and 
not the only expression of parochial family life. 
The assembled congregation is the symbol of an 
enduring Christian brotherhood, where mutual 
consideration, love and service form the unaltera- 
ble watchwords. To-day this thought is much ob- 

[ 90 ] 



THE CHURCH IN PRATER 

scured by the parochial family having so little 
reality outside the church walls. This is especially 
applicable to city churches, where congregations 
gather from the remotest localities. The parish 
seems to be fast dying out and the congregation 
is taking its place. The people who worship in 
the same building neither know one another nor, 
in many instances, desire to. This is simply fatal 
to ideal public worship, one purpose of which at 
any rate is to quicken and seal the sympathy that 
already exists as the result of intercourse in the 
outside world. It is a grave responsibility for any 
one, for the sake of what he may deem to be 
larger spiritual privileges, to leave the church of 
the locality in which he lives and where his natu- 
ral duties and friendships lie, to go to some distant 
place of worship where fellowship is impossible. 
Ideally the worshippers belonging to the parochial 
family are all known to one another and in fre- 
quent personal contaft ; they do not look to their 
clergy alone for spiritual help, but also to their fel- 
low laymen. All too often the clergy are supposed 
to have the sole responsibility of spiritually aid- 
ing the members of a parish, whereas, the laity, 
whether they recognize it or not, have almost an 
equal responsibility. The clergyman does spiritual 

c 91 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

work, not because he is a clergyman, but because 
he is a Christian ; though his special vocation de- 
termines the exaft form his work should take. If 
there were more intelligent sympathy among the 
members of the congregation one with another, 
what strength would come to the penitent strug- 
gling to his feet, what added power to the faith- 
ful ! Many fail, not because the clergy have been 
negligent, but because those who are termed the 
brethren have never extended a helping hand to 
support, to comfort, to cheer. If a congregation 
were alive to these responsibilities outside of the 
church, what a glorious time would be the gather- 
ing within its walls — inspiring, thrilling ! Indeed, 
any one who tries to be unselfish and to aft in the 
common concerns of life with reference to his 
neighbour's interests, any one who has elsewhere 
learned ever so little about intercession, cannot be 
unmindful when he comes to church of those who 
worship by his side, strangers though they be. By 
the exercise of sympathy, sympathy which he has 
learned to kindle with less at hand to quicken it to 
life than that given by the living, breathing forms 
near by, he can bring close to him his fellow-wor- 
shippers, moving into the shadow of their inter- 
cessions as well as calling them in to share his own. 

[ 92 ] 



THE CHURCH IN PRATER 

It will be noticed that the usual order has been 
reversed in the foregoing. Usually men are urged 
to worship well that they may live well ; * the 
proposition that has been made here is that men 
must live well if they would worship well. It 
makes little difference which way the thought is 
expressed, the mode of expression depending on 
the part of the circle at which we begin our course. 
Life runs up into worship and worship runs out 
into life. Each leads into the other. 
The use of a liturgy is an added power to public 
worship. It is only by liturgical aids that public 
worship can become common worship. A liturgy 
delivers a congregation from the spiritual idiosyn- 
crasies of a minister as well as disciplining those 
of the worshippers themselves. The comprehen- 
siveness and symmetry, the saneness and dignity 
of the Book of Common Prayer are educative 
forces of enormous value. Left to themselves men 
lose the true perspective of things ; they dwell too 
much on matters of secondary importance, and 
become insular in their outlook. A liturgy comes 
in as a corrective of these constitutional failings ; 
it confronts us with all that is vast in the realm 
of truth ; it calls us away from the consideration 
* See p. 7. 

[ 93 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

of those things over which we have pondered until 
morbidness has seized upon us ; it ministers that 
grateful rest which comes from the mind being 
freed from the contemplation of one set of inter- 
ests, by being caught away by and absorbed in 
new and wider interests ; it rounds out the devo- 
tional life ; it invites us to lean upon the prayers 
of others as we desire them to lean on ours. 
All who aspire to worship well in the congrega- 
tion must note that the liturgy sets the tone for 
all devotions. Those who in private affeft spiritual 
exercises foreign to the charafter of the Prayer 
Book of the Church, may get a certain emotional 
satisfaction for the moment, but they purchase 
the luxury at the cost of weakening their power 
for common worship. Their private prayers form 
no preparation for their public prayers. The clergy 
have it as a grave responsibility to see that the 
books of private devotion which they put into 
the hands of their people are such as fit into the 
Church's system. 

Demeanour in the congregation is a small thing to 
think of after the great central theme that has been 
holding our attention. But nothing is unworthy of 
consideration which bears on the perfecting of 
common worship ; and with two simple observa- 
[ 94 ] 



THE CHURCH IN PRATER 

tions on demeanour this chapter will be closed. 
First, regarding the self-consciousness that both 
distresses the soul and weakens its devotional 
power. The sense, while in the aft of prayer, of 
being observed by others, is distracting. But is it 
not a piece of conceit to imagine that we are being 
observed, widely at any rate, as well as something 
akin to an insult to those about us ? Are we not 
implicitly charging them with negleft of duty and 
with irreverence ? After all they are probably oc- 
cupied with their devotions as we ourselves should 
be. The simplest way of conquering the distrac- 
tion when it arises is to take the person or persons 
concerned into our prayers by a conscious aft. 
Then in the second place, as to our own behav- 
iour, it is only common charity to avoid singular- 
ity of conduft. Most of the ordinary afts of rever- 
ence which the individual may praftise, can be so 
unobtrusively performed as not to attraft notice. 
But when there is a danger of causing distraftion 
to others, as in a strange parish for instance, it is 
more conducive to real reverence to omit than to 
observe them. Sometimes the best way to be loyal 
to a principle is deliberately to break a rule, and 
if this suggestion be reasonable then why should 
not a person, unaccustomed to ornate ritual, fall 
[ 95 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

in with any legitimate customs observed, if he finds 
himself at any time in a church where such cus- 
toms obtain ? 






[ 96 ] 



Chapter x 



The Great Aft of Worship 




SHE Eucharist is the Church's great 
central aft of corporate worship. It 
would be strange, considering the 
origin of this wonderful mystery, 
were it otherwise. Even those who regard it as a 
bare memorial of the historic occurrence of Christ's 
Passion and nothing more, however highly they 
may honour the ordinary round of prayer and 
praise, approach the Eucharist with unwonted 
awe. 

Of course no one conception of its charafter is 
complete, as its various and stately names testify. 
So bound up with the Person of our Lord is it, 
that, as new treasures of knowledge are laid open 
concerning Him who is the eternal Son of God, 
this feast of rich things is proportionately enriched 
to the participant. Says Jeremy Taylor in his quaint 
and reverent way: "The Holy Communion or 
Supper of the Lord is the most sacred, mysterious 
and useful conjugation of secret and holy things 

[ 97 J 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

and duties in the religion." * And withal it is, in 
essence, of all simple things the most simple — a 
meal, a meal transformed and exalted, it is true, 
but still a meal. However difficult the liturgy may- 
be for unlearned folk, the sacrament itself, "the 
breaking of the bread," is easily understood by 
every one, even the least wise. Nor is it hard to 
reconcile the idea of a feast with this meagre meal 
of a morsel of bread and a sip of wine ; for every- 
day experience has prepared us for the conveyance 
of great wealth through what has no intrinsic ex- 
cellence. If a scrap of paper can have the value of 
heaps of gold, and, by the law of association, an 
age- worn trinket can become of priceless worth, it 
suggests no unreality to claim that under certain 
conditions a simple meal becomes a royal banquet, 
filling heart and soul and mind, and admitting into 
the very presence of the Most Holy and Most 
High. There is diversity in the explication of this 
aft of worship, but whatever difference of opinion 
there may be regarding its exaft nature, those 
most widely separated in thought will agree in 
this, that it is a profound rite, and that in it is 
spiritual wealth. And in these days, when at last 
men are beginning to perceive that truth is always 
* Works : VoL <viii. p. 1 8 . 

[ 98 ] 



THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 

greater than its best definition, no one will con- 
tend that what he sees in the Eucharist is all that 
it contains.* 

The best commentary on the Eucharist is the clos- 
ing chapter of our Lord's mortal career. The Son 
of Man, as He approached the Cross, drew nigh 
to that which throughout His ministry He had 
viewed as a goal ; the crucifixion was what He 
had been preparing Himself for in all that He said 
and did throughout His human experience ; His 
whole life was indeed a "long going forth to 
death." He aspired to reach the moment when 
He would be lifted up from the earth. He saw 
and predi&ed with composure all the horror and 
shame of the Passion, the betrayal and desertion, 
the scourging and spitting. But He saw even more 
clearly the dignity and wonder and majesty of the 
opportunity contained in it all, and spoke of it 
with suppressed joy : "I have a baptism to be bap- 
tized with ; and how am I straitened till it be ac- 

* It is not easy to be understood, it is not lightly to be received j 
it is not much opened in the workings of the Ne<w Testament, 
but still left in its mysterious nature -, it is too much untwisted 
and nicely handled by the ^writings of the doclors ; and by them 
made more mysterious, and like a doclrine of philosophy made 
intricate by explications, and difficult by the apperture and dis- 
solution of distinctions . — Jeremy Taylor, Works, vol. f uiii,p. 8. 

[ 99 J 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

complished ! " The Cross would test to the full 
His obedience to God and reveal to what lengths 
Divine love would go to redeem sinful man. When 
men near the goal of their innocent ambition their 
cup of joy is full ; nor was Christ's less than full. 
In the first Eucharist the pain of self-sacrifice for 
the time being was lost in the joy of self-fulfilment. 
When He took the bread and the wine and said, 
"This is My Body which is broken for you," 
"This is My Blood which is shed for you," He 
made the sacrifice of Himself. It is this aft which 
separates His death from all other deaths, trans- 
forming the crucifixion from a judicial murder 
into a triumph of self-oblation. It is not the Cross 
which explains the Eucharist, but rather the Eu- 
charist which explains the Cross. * Eliminate the 
Eucharist from the story of the Passion and our 
Lord's death sinks from the atoning aft by which 
the world is reconciled to God into a mere aft of 
resignation to a painful fate, to be classed with the 
death of Socrates and like heroes. It is the Eucha- 
rist that enables us to say that the crucifixion was 
a sacrifice ; that however true it is that Christ was 
put to death by sinful men, it is a truth of greater 
magnitude that, according to His repeated predic- 
* Milne. 

[ ioo ] 



THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 

tion, He laid down His life for His friends ; that 
the Cross of Calvary, and through it every cross 
that bows the shoulders of men, has become the 
instrument of viftory and a school of obedience 
and sympathy. 

No aft of Christ was a mere personal experience. 
The Son of Man, as in loving sympathy He de- 
clared Himself to be, was the Universal Charac- 
ter whose life must needs concern and touch all 
other lives. It was His expressed desire that His 
fellows should share all that He was and did. He, 
the Son of God, became the Son of Man that we 
might become Sons of God.* Therefore it is not 
surprising that, at this the supreme moment of His 
life, He should bid the representative group who 
companied with Him, and through them all men, 
come in and participate in its power and joy ; He 
did not merely lay down His life, but asked others 
to enter into His experience, saying, "Take, eat ; 
this is My Body," "Drink ye all of this; this is 
My Blood." For what is the import of this invita- 
tion but this? "Associate yourselves with Me, — 
aye, be one with Me, incorporated into Me, in 
this great moment of self-offering ; for I would 
present you a willing surrender in and with My- 
* 2 Cor. njii'i: 9. 

[ 101 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

self." The idea of at-one-ment was never more 
intelligible than in these latter days. We are be- 
coming more and more conscious of how close- 
wrought are the fibres of the human race ; we 
recognize how the life of any one man affefts the 
life of his fellows, and how the individual can 
gather into his own soul the sorrows and joys, the 
perplexities and aspirations of many people. If this 
is part of the experience of a son of man, it fol- 
lows that the Son of Man, by the extension and 
completion of that quality which, when found in 
us, is known as sympathy, if by nothing else be- 
yond, — and the charafter of His personality tells 
us there is much beyond that is inexplicable — not 
only may but must take into Himself and hold 
there for time and eternity the whole race — ex- 
cept so far, alas, as men struggle from the freedom 
of His embrace into the slavery of a false independ- 
ence. Thus the Eucharist is the divinely chosen 
means whereby we men are invited to enter into, 
and consciously to appropriate the highest points 
of the viftory of the Cross as well as what lies be- 
yond, — the resurreftion life. Through it He shares 
with us His life-giving death and His deathless life, 
His Divine nature and His perfeft humanity, and 
we are "accepted in the Beloved." 
[ 102 ] 



THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 

The various titles of the sacrament of Christ's 
Body and Blood suggest its various aspedts,* one 
of which, and that the one that happily is most 
common in our Church, we shall consider — the 
Holy Communion. This title indicates the view 
of the sacrament which most readily appeals to 
the human heart. The Holy Communion means, 
of course, "the Holy Fellowship" — not "a" but 
"the," that fellowship which above all others is 
holy, the end of which is to make all who partici- 
pate in it holy. It is fellowship with the Father in 
Christ — not merely with Christ; that is not the 
whole of it, for Christ, the Son of God and the 
Son of Man as He is, is the "Way" to the Fa- 
ther. Nor is it an ordinary fellowship, of which 
the fellowship of mere men is a complete image. 
Ordinary fellowship allows two lives to intertwine ; 
but here so close is the relationship that " Christ 
with us," "we with Christ" is inadequate to de- 
scribe the intimacy, and " we in Christ," " Christ 
in us," phrases which no one dare to apply to any 
other friendship, can alone tell the tale. And "we 
in Christ" not "Christ in us" is the grander and 

# See a valuable little book, Some Titles and AspeSls of the 
Eucharist, by E. S. Talbot, D. D. (Bishop of Rochester). Ri<v- 
ington, Percival 6f Co., London. 

[ 103 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

more frequent phrase. "In Christ" tells of the un- 
measured wealth of fellowship, divine and human, 
which is the Christian heritage ; it is the whole 
parable of the vine and the branches in two syl- 
lables.* This is the Godward aspect of the sacra- 
ment. And in this connection three things are to 
be noted: — 

§ I. Every fresh communion is a new point of con- 
tact with God in Christ through the working of 
the Eternal Spirit ; each last communion means 
more than any of those which have gone before, 
as even in our association with a human friend 
new qualities and untried depths of familiar char- 
acteristics are revealed in each successive act of 
intercourse. Friendship is taken up day by day on 
a higher level than formerly, because of these new 
glimpses of the inner recesses of life which are 
caught from time to time as friends meet. And 
frequent repetition of the sacrament ought no 
more to impair its value, than frequent meetings 
the reality of friendship. 

§ 2. Communion is only begun and not ended at 
the altar. It is something more than a touch for a 
moment. Grace is not the infusion of some mys- 
terious spiritual property, which God having im- 
* Bp. Alexander. 

[ i°4 1 



THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 

parted leaves the recipient to make use of by him- 
self; grace is the gift of God's personal working in 
the life through the indwelling spirit. God never 
holds His faithful children one moment to let 
them go the next. He enfolds us in Himself with 
a tightening embrace, as by loyalty to His laws 
and repeated a£ts of faith, we expose new portions 
of our nature for Him to lay hold on. The sense of 
God's presence may be peculiarly full as we kneel 
to receive the heavenly food, just as at the moment 
of meeting again one whom we love the emotions 
are deeply stirred ; but by virtue of yesterday's com- 
munion, God is as near at hand to-day as He was 
when we received the sacrament. The Holy Com- 
munion would fail in its purpose if it made the pre- 
sence of our Lord a reality only for the time being, 
and did not more fully introduce men into the Di- 
vine presence as an abiding state. The fa£t of God's 
immanence in us requires this conclusion. 
§ 3. The result of a faithful reception of the Holy 
Communion should be holiness in the common, 
everyday life, from which an incident, the family 
meal, is borrowed and transformed as the symbol 
and means by which all other incidents may be 
transformed. So great a mystery demands all the 
majesty of a liturgy and the accompaniment of 

[ 105 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

stately worship ; and a dignified ritual attached to 
this representative, this common aft of our human 
life, is most valuable as indicating the majesty of 
all that is commonplace when it is touched by 
God. Just as we consecrate certain times and sea- 
sons in order that all times and seasons may be- 
come holy, so in the sacraments God has taught 
us to consecrate the simplest afts of ordinary life 
— the bath and the meal — as typical of the poten- 
tial sacredness of all afts, and as a means of sanc- 
tifying and ennobling them. So the Holy Com- 
munion touches alike private life and life in society, 
the life of recreation and the life of business, and 
unless it transfigures each of these departments of 
human experience it falls short of its purpose. Let 
the business man remember that he strains to see 
and touch the Most Holy at the altar that he may 
see and touch the Most Holy in the market ; let 
the professional man and the man of letters, the 
day labourer and the scientist each in his sphere 
be carried from the vision of God in the Eucharist 
to the abiding fellowship with God in his special 
vocation. He who comes from God goes to God, 
whithersoever his steps may bear him. The pre- 
sence of our Lord at the altar is special but not 
exclusive. It is not a lamp lighted for a moment 
[ 106 ] 



THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 

and then put out, but a light which will illumi- 
nate all life, and enable us to see at every turn the 
vision of omnipresent Love. It is one funftion of 
the sacraments to enhance, not to dim, the reality 
of God's immanence in all His works ; to train us 
to perceive and apprehend that 

Earth V crammed with heaven 

And every common bush afire with God, — 

a declaration which otherwise would be held to be 
but a poet's fickle fancy or a vague philosophical 
idea. Days are coming, if they are not already upon 
us, when in the midst of scientific progress and ex- 
planation in which men are prone to rest as final, 
the believer's ceaseless theme must be the Divine in- 
dwelling. And the strongest and most telling means 
of keeping alive this truth for ourselves and others 
is the sacramental system of the Church. 
Thus far we have been thinking of the Godward 
aspeft of the Holy Communion — fellowship with 
God in Christ. On its manward side it is fellowship 
with man in Christ. As it sustains us in Divine fel- 
lowship and lifts us continually into purer heights, 
so it assures us of our incorporation in the mystical 
Body of Christ, "which is the blessed company of 
all faithful people," and inspires us to deeper love. 

[ I0 7 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

Here again it is necessary to recall the original sim- 
ple form of the sacrament, a form so simple that, 
as Bishop Westcott says somewhere, it is difficult 
in the earliest references to it to distinguish it from 
the ordinary family meal. The brethren gather 
around the common table and partake of the com- 
mon loaf.* And the use of the one loving-cup from 
which all drink goes beyond the customs of ordi- 
nary family life. The Holy Communion, which is 
a social aft, speaks of the transformation of social 
life.t Just as the constant sharing of food at one 
table is the pledge of loyal service to one another 

# Cf i Cor. x: 17. — "We, who are many, are one loaf" 
The one serious objection to the otherwise convenient custom 
of using unleavened bread in the shape of wafers is that the 
symbolism of the common loaf is lost, and the point of contacl 
with common life is somewhat obscured. 
f Our Church, by the title adopted, by the form of service used, 
by the spirit of her rubrics where they touch upon the subjecl, 
-plainly declares it to be her intention that the Holy Communion 
should always be celebrated so as to be a social acl. The priest 
is not a mere representative of the congregation, doing things 
for them, but a leader aSling with them. For the priest to acl 
without the congregation is only less anomalous than for the 
congregation to atl without the priest. Not that the whole con- 
gregation present should necessarily receive at any given cele- 
bration of the Holy Communion, though in the judgment of the 
present writer the ideal would be reached only thus. 

[ 108 ] , 



THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 

on the part of all who partake, as well as a means 
of gaining strength to fulfil the pledge, so the Holy 
Communion is a pledge to mutual sendee and 
equipment for its accomplishment. "In Christ" a 
new relationship is established between man and 
man, or rather an old relationship is deepened and 
consummated. Brethren after the flesh are made 
brethren in the Lord.* Family and national ties are 
very sacred and very close, but they reach the full 
purpose which God designed for them only when 
they become the basis for spiritual kinship.lt is con- 
sidered a dreadful thing, and rightly so, when men 
of common blood are at variance with one another ; 
nothing is more shameful than a family feud. And 
on the other hand, blood relationship is in itself a 
demand for the most loyal service that men are ca- 
pable of rendering. Now through the sacramental 
life a kinship is established and sustained as real and 
as binding as that consequent upon the accident of 
birth ; so that for Christian to be at variance with 
Christian is as unnatural as it is for two of one fam- 
ily to strive with one another ; for Christian to over- 
reach Christian is as treacherous as it was for Jacob 
to steal Esau's blessing. The loyalty which those 
who are " in Christ " owe one another is the loyalty 
*Cf. Philemon 16. 

[ 109 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

due among those who sit at the same board and eat 
of the same loaf, among those in whose veins runs 
the blood of a common mother. When men learn 
the reality and force of spiritual kinship, social pro- 
blems will be solved and social evils will cease. 
But a hasty glance has been bestowed in the fore- 
going pages on a mystery of unsearchable depth, 
and many of its aspedts have not even been noted. 
The more obvious aspefts are the ones upon which 
stress has been laid as including in them all others. 
As with all other forms of approach to God, so 
here, what a man knows about the Holy Com- 
munion is that which God has taught him in his 
reception of the Sacrament. Those who would 
fain plumb its depths must come frequently and 
preparedly to the feast. Nor is preparation a formal 
aft. It is unfortunate that some teachers make it 
so by laying insistence on a set form. The best, 
and indeed the only, true preparation is an out- 
come of a full knowledge of the thing for which 
we wish to prepare ourselves, just as the best thanks- 
giving for a blessing is the spontaneous utterance 
consequent upon a contemplation of the gift re- 
ceived. The man who knows the spiritual signifi- 
cance of the Holy Communion, ipso fafto knows 
how to prepare to receive it. 

[ no ] . 



Chapter vi 




Witnesses unto the Uttermost Part of the Earth 

SHE breadth of the Christian's vision 
is exceeded only by its height, and 
his influence is coterminous with no- 
thing less than the human fabric of 
which he is a part. By faith man penetrates into 
the heaven of heavens and reaches the very pre- 
sence of God himself, a privilege and duty which 
belong not to a favoured few but to the race. 

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars, 

is a truth of universal application. But just as the 
stars must not limit man's vision as he gazes up, 
neither must the horizon limit his vision as he looks 
abroad. Christian energy is not doing its full work 
unless it aims at touching the uttermost part of the 
earth. That which is recorded in Afts I : 8 * tells 
of an abiding principle and not merely of a historic 
faft. Our Lord is speaking through that group of 

* Ye shall be ^witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all 
Judaa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the 
earth. 

[ i" ] 



V/ITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

representative men who witnessed His Ascension, 
to all who become his followers. Not the Apostles 
alone but all Christians are destined to be His wit- 
nesses "unto the uttermost part of the earth." It is 
only to be expefted that those who have the power 
to explore the secrets of the divine Being, will also 
have this lesser power of world-wide influence, 
which after all, great as it is, is infinitely less aspiring 
than the former. The same faith that enables us to 
love and serve our Lord in heaven, equips us to love 
and serve the men of the remote parts of the earth. 
To have the former is to be heir to the latter. 
Men who imbibe this principle and make it part 
of themselves are said to have missionary spirit. 
But it cannot be too strongly insisted that this 
spirit is not something over and above the common 
Christian character ; for it is not a possession which 
we are to claim simply because we are bidden to 
do so, spurred to it by the " very purity of the law 
of duty." The missionary spirit is inherent in Chris- 
tianity. Even though Christ had never said, " Go 
ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations,"* 
even if He had not assured His followers that they 
were to be witnesses " unto the uttermost part of 
the earth," it would have made no practical differ- 
* St. Matt, xx^viii .'19. 

[ "2 ] 



WITNESSES 

ence in the final issue of Christian truth. The 
Church would have been missionary just the same 
— S. Paul, S. Augustine, S. Columba, S. Francis 
Xavier, would have striven for the Gospel's sake 
none the less boldly, none the less zealously. The 
missionary is not a missionary because of a few 
missionary texts in the Bible. He is a missionary 
because he is a Christian. All Christ's commands 
are invitations, which merely put into concise lan- 
guage what the heart already recognizes as its privi- 
lege and joy. The missionary commission * is the 
Church's charter, telling all men of her right to 
dare to make Christianity coterminous with hu- 
manity, arresting the attention of those to whom 
the missionary is sent rather than acting as the 
sole motive power of the missionary ; from it we 
get definite authority, and so a measure of inspira- 
tion, but we do not rest upon it, as though it were 
by an arbitrary fiat of God that a Christian were 
converted into a missionary.t The latter term tells 

* St. Matt, xxv Hi: 19, 20. 

-j- The following remarkable phrase occurs in S. Andrews De- 
votions -. — Who [i. e., Chris f\ hath manifested in every place 
the savour of His knowledge . . . by the incredible conversion 
of the vuorld to the Faith, without assistance of authority, 
without intervention of persuasion. 

[ "3 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

of one aspeft of the Christian chara&er, that is all. 
Whoever accepts Christ's Christianity — the re- 
dundancy is necessary — forthwith becomes a mis- 
sionary.* Andrew needed no injunction to seek 
Peter ; he did it because, being a follower of Christ, 
he could not help it. And if he had refrained, he 
would have ceased at that moment to be a disciple. 
Christians, whether considered individually or cor- 
porately, who are not missionary in desire and in- 
tention, are Christians only in name, getting little 
from and contributing nothing to the religion of 
the Incarnation. If the foregoing contention be 
true, the definition of "missionary" stands sadly 
in need of revision. A missionary is an honourable 
title not to be reserved only for those who work 
for God in the waste places of His vineyard, but 
the coveted possession of every Christian who 
strives to bear a wide witness, as well as deep, to 
Christ among men. 

Missionary service is a personal thing ; it cannot 
be deputed to another any more than it can have 
something else as a substitute for it. Contributing 
money in order that others may be maintained in 
their missionary undertakings, does not exempt 

* The Brotherhood of S. Andrew is nothing more than an or- 
ganised effort to fulfil a common Christian duty, 

[ 114 ] 



WITNESSES 

the donor from personal service himself. Every 
Christian is bound to strive to deepen and widen, 
by the force of his personality in Christ, the King- 
dom of God. Of course there is a narrower and a 
wider missionary spirit. The latter is reached by 
faithfulness to the former, here as well as elsewhere 
effeftive breadth beginning in depth. All mission- 
ary power begins (as well as ends) in that uncon- 
scious witness* which the Christian character 
bears to Christ. So infeftious a thing is God's 
truth, that to receive it is to spread it. 

As one lamp lights another nor grows less, 
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness, 

"Ye are the light of the world;" "Ye are the 
salt of the earth." And it is that part of the char- 
after which easily, simply and naturally lays hold 
* Cfi Emerson s <verses on unconscious influence : 

Little thinks, in the field, yon red cloaked clown, 

Of thee from the hill-top looking down -, 

The heifer that lows in the upland farm, 

Ear-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; 

The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, 

Dreams not that great Napoleon 

Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 

While his files sweep round yon Alpine height ; 

Nor knowest thou what argument 

Thy life to thy neighbour s creed has lent. 

[ "5 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

on Christ, that first sheds God's light abroad and 
becomes the preservative element of society. 
It is further noticeable that the sphere of Christian 
influence as alluded to by our Lord in the Sermon 
on the Mount, corresponds with the sphere of 
witness-bearing marked out by Him in His part- 
ing words before the Ascension — "Ye are the 
light of the world; " " Ye are the salt of the earth ; " 
" Ye shall be witnesses unto the uttermost part of 
the earth." To recognize the faft that the Chris- 
tian life is the most invincible and the most per- 
meating influence that the world can ever know, 
is an enormous incentive to consistency and zeal- 
ous devotion. Christian character is the only force 
which a man can both leave behind him, and take 
with him when he comes to die. Nothing can 
withstand it, and nothing can check its career. It 
is bound to impress all that it touches, and it 
touches everything — "the world," "the earth." 
It is not too much to hold that unconscious influence 
always exceeds conscious influence, the latter reach- 
ing the zenith of its effectiveness only when it has 
been transformed, by constant use, into the former. 
It is in the home that the Christian begins that wit- 
ness-bearing, which is destined to reach so far. 
But the widest missionary spirit is inclusive. It 
[ "6 ] 



WITNESSES 

is not a substitute for home work, any more than 
public life is a substitute for family life. The former 
is the extension of the latter. The disciples of the 
first days reached the uttermost part of the earth 
through Jerusalem and all Judaea and Samaria; 
while the disciples of these latter days must touch 
the bounds of the world through the parish, the 
diocese, the Church of the nation. Nothing, no 
matter how fine and striking it may be, can take 
the place of loyalty to the duties that are nearest at 
hand. Church life may be conceived of as a series 
of concentric circles, the innermost of which re- 
presenting parochial relations, the next diocesan 
missions, then domestic, and the outermost circle 
foreign missions. Power to traverse the large cir- 
cumference comes from faithfully treading the 
round of those that lie within, beginning with that 
next the centre. The only way to have power and 
to serve abroad is to live a deep full life at home, 
and, let it be added, the only way to have large 
power and to serve at home is to cast the eye far 
abroad and wind the interests of a whole world 
around the heart. And the spiritual force of the 
foreign mission field is no lying index of the spirit- 
ual condition of the home Church ; it tells the tale 
as truly as the pulse reports for the heart. It may 
[ "7 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

be perfectly true of every other society of men that 
mere concentration is the secret of power, but it 
is not so with the Church. Any ecclesiastical unit, 
be it parish, diocese, province, or national Church, 
which is content to feed itself on rich spiritual 
food, without regard for the rest of the world, will 
sooner or later be filled with disease and die. How- 
ever specious a form self-contemplation may as- 
sume, it inevitably ends in ruin, for it leads to 
isolation ; and what is isolation but the most awful 
and irretrievable of catastrophes ? The only true 
independence is that which is the fruit of inter- 
dependence. A given Church may have all the ap- 
pearance of life — there may be popularity, large 
property, handsome equipment and other signs of 
outward prosperity — but within there is nothing 
but death. It is just as wrong and just as fatal to 
hold aloof, on any plea soever, from the common 
life of the entire Church at home and abroad, as it 
is to cut ourselves off from the Church of the past by 
a denial of fundamental truth. The former, quite as 
much as the latter, is a departure from Apostolic 
Christianity, and so merits the opprobrious name 
of schism. 

It is a strange but inflexible spiritual law, that those 

who aim at anything short of the best according to 

[ "8 ] 



WITNESSES 

their conception, as God has given them light, will 
sooner or later come to grief. It is merely a matter 
of time, The hope of Christianity lies in its bold- 
ness. The Church is strong when she is daring, 
and only then ; her strength rises and falls with her 
courage — victory is faith.* What an inspiration 
to every parish, the lowliest and poorest as well as 
the numerically strong and financially rich ! — the 
uttermost part of the earth is within the reach of 
its influence : ay, more than that, is in need of its 
prayers and its labours. Work for foreign missions 
is the climax and crown of Christian life, not a 
sluggish tributary to it. And a parish will be in the 
vanguard of God's forces or far in the rear, accord- 
ing as it rises to its responsibility in this direftion 
or not. 

There is an immense amount of untutored mis- 
sionary desire. That is to say, there are vast num- 
bers of Christians whose hearts burn towards those 
who do not know Christ, but there is no man to 
teach them how to crystallize desire into prayer 
and aftion and let the stream of their desire run 
clear and full ; there are many others, too, who 
have a narrow missionary spirit and who linger in 
Judaea and Samaria, only because they have never 

* i John <v : 4. 

[ "9 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

been shown how it is possible to reach unto the 
uttermost part of the earth. The fire is there, but 
it smoulders for want of fuel. Men need direction 
for their missionary aspirations ; they need to be 
instructed in the work that is being done. We can- 
not expeft people to be interested in what they 
know nothing about. If the cause of missions is 
presented as an abstra&ion, and men are urged to 
give "on principle," the gifts that come will be 
such as cost the givers nothing. And as for prayers 
— well, there will be none, for prayers cannot live 
on abstractions. The clergy should be the leaders 
in making the missions of the Church a living 
thing ; and it is nothing short of a scandal that so 
many pulpits are closed to those who wear the 
title of "missionary." But whatever be the short- 
comings of the clergy, there is no more reason 
why Christian laymen should be ignorant of the 
general features of Church work in the far West 
or in China and Japan than that they should be 
ignorant of international politics; and there is 
more reason for shame on account of ignorance in 
the former than in the latter case. Once waken 
men's interest in the work abroad as a concrete 
reality, and there will be stronger prayer, more 
numerous offers for personal service in foreign 
[ *20 ] 



WITNESSES 

work from the best and bravest, more liberal con- 
tributions in money. 

It has already been hinted that not only does the 
uttermost part of the earth need Christianity, but 
that Christianity needs the uttermost part of the 
earth. We cannot fully know Christ until all the 
nations have seen and believed and told their vision. 
The Church of God is poor, in that it lacks the 
contribution which the un-Christianized nations 
alone can give by being evangelized. Just as the 
speculative East needed in the first days the prafti- 
cal West to balance its concept of the Gospel, and 
vice versa , so it is now. Before we can see the full 
glory of the Incarnation, representatives of all na- 
tions must blend their vision with that which has 
already been granted. Every separate stone must 
be set before the temple reaches its final splendour. 
Foreign missions are as much for the Church's sake 
as for the heathen's, as much for the eternal profit 
of those who are sent as for those to whom they 

go- 
No attempt has been made in these pages to argue 

as with men who do not believe in the widest mis- 
sionary enterprise, for missionary spirit is not cre- 
ated by argument. Indeed, many an objedtion is 
but the instrument by which persons convift them- 
[ 121 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

selves of being Christian only in name. There is no 
answer to what they say excepting, "Of course 
you cannot believe in missions, because it is evi- 
dent you do not believe in Christ. To believe in 
Christ is to believe in missions, missions unto the 
uttermost part of the earth." It would be a shame 
to appear to apologize for what is of the essence 
of Christianity. So we turn away from all smaller 
reasoning, to the one great spring and impulse of 
mission work far and near. The Christian has to 
see those whom Christ sees, for the follower looks 
through his master's eyes; the Christian has to 
love and serve those whom Christ loves and serves, 
for the follower lives only in his master's spirit. 
Consequently, he must see, love and serve unto 
the uttermost part of the earth. Being a follower 
of Christ, he cannot help it ; he does it for the 
same reason and with the same naturalness that 
the sun shines and the rose sheds its fragrance 
abroad. 



[ 122 ] 



Chapter %ii 




The Inspiration of Responsibility 

JHE responsibility of the sons of God 
has been the theme of this book, and 
the writer trusts that in dwelling 
upon the duties of the Christian life 
he has not failed to bring out something of its glory 
and inspiration. But the thing out of which we can 
gather the largest help to fulfil our responsibility is 
the responsibility itself. If God dwells high up on 
the hills of difficulty, He has a throne, too, in the 
heart of every claim made on human chara&er.* 
The presence in our life of a difficulty is a call to 
responsibility, and the acceptance of a responsibility 
is the admittance into personal experience of God 
in His triumphant march toward the great consum- 
mation ; it is correspondence with victory. Just as 
the glory of duty consists, not in its immediate is- 
sue, but in its performance, so the main inspiration 
for responsibility comes not from external goads 
and spurs, but from the very thing which lies at our 
# See Appendix. 

[ 123 j 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

feet, looking at first sight like a task given to mock 
rather than inspire, to denude of what little power 
we have rather than to equip, to undo the would- 
be doer rather than to be done by him. Responsi- 
bility without doubt is a task, but much more is it an 
inspiration. Of course the measure of inspiration 
which it imparts is proportionate to the faith and 
courage with which it is approached. Responsibility 
handled with dilettante fingers will only cut and 
wound ; grasped in firm embrace, it will bestow so 
much illumination and vigour that the pain which 
inaugurates the gift will be forgotten almost before 
the last ache has faded out. And again, it is not too 
much to say that the greater a responsibility is, the 
greater is its power to inspire. In other words, in- 
spiration is always commensurate with responsi- 
bility. " As thy days, so shall thy strength be." In 
the common Christian duty, which has been out- 
lined in the foregoing pages, so great is the respon- 
sibility imposed that nothing short of the highest 
conceivable incentive can carry a man through. 
And the inspiration lies within the task and will 
declare itself only in the doing of the task. 
Even on the natural side man finds attraction and 
inspiration in problems, puzzles and difficulties.* 
* See Prof, William James in, Is Life Worth Living ? " Too 

[ 124 ] 



The INSPIRATION of RESPONSIBILITY 

No sooner is one problem solved or one difficulty 
surmounted than another is eagerly sought for and 
grappled with. The spice of life lies in its antago- 
nisms.* It is not the prospeft of some reward of 
wealth or honour that carries men to the crown 
of their task ; it is the joy of the doing, a joy that 
is felt even in those preliminary experimentations 
which only pave the way to the real undertaking. 
Men — we are not thinking of butterflies — can- 
not exist without difficulty. To be shorn of it 
means death, because inspiration is bound up with 
it, and inspiration is the breath of God, without 
the constant influx of which man ceases to be a 
living soul. Responsibility is the sacrament of in- 
spiration. The miracles of Christ, whatever else 
they did, suggested new responsibility to the race, 
opened up a new field of daring and enlarged the 

much questioning and too little aSlive responsibility lead, almost 
as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at 
the bottom of c which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suici- 
dal view of life" 

* See Dr. John Fiske in his recently published, Through Na- 
ture to God, where in a study of the Mystery of Evil, he de- 
velopes this thought most admirably, though making the 
unnecessary deduclion that God is the creator of moral evil. 



[ 125 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

scope of human operations. They encouraged men 
to attempt the impossible ; and without question 
the hidden but no less effective cause of all scien- 
tific development has been and is Christian aspira- 
tion, roused to its highest pitch by the marvels per- 
formed by the Man Christ Jesus. Christian faith 
has educated us to a belief that the first promise 
of order lies in the discovery of chaos, and that 
every problem carries in its own pocket a key 
formed to fit the hand of man. Thus interest in 
the sorrows and perplexities of the multitudes rises 
from a nerveless compassion that of yore worked 
laboriously with its " law-stiffened fingers," to a 
wide-reaching ministration of power ; the secrets 
of nature become invitations to knowledge ; and 
effort that was once merely instinctive and ran- 
dom becomes rational and triumphant. 
But Christ enabled men to achieve what before 
they had only sighed after, not by releasing from, 
but on the contrary by adding to human responsi- 
bility. He saw the inspiration of responsibility, so by 
making the latter great He made the former reach 
its height ; He equipped man to do the smaller 
duties of life by giving larger ones. It will for ever 
hold true that to bring men up to their best, we 
must call them to the highest. They are to be won, 

[ 126 j 






The INSPIRATION of RESPONSIBILITT 

not by the promise of a gift, but by a ringing call to 
duty, not by something to eat, but by something to 
do. One reason at least why Christianity is bound 
to supersede all other religions is because of the 
supreme largeness of its demands on human charac- 
ter and the supreme inspiration that those demands 
contain. The fault of most modern prophets is not 
that they present too high an ideal, but an ideal that 
is sketched with a faltering hand ; the appeal to self- 
sacrifice is too timid and imprecise, the challenge to 
courage is too low-voiced, with the result that the 
tide of inspiration ebbs low. The call to each soul 
to contribute its quota toward the realization of the 
most remote ideal so far from being depressing is 
stimulating, and a necessary goad to the promotion 
of individual as well as corporate development. 
Mr. Kipling's prophetic voice rings out above the 
Babel of a garrulous age and inspires men in the 
only way they can be inspired, by pointing out hu- 
man responsibility and bidding men take up their 
burden. 

Go to your work and be strong, baiting not on your ways, 
Balking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise. 
Stand to your work and be wise, certain of sword and pen, 
Who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world 
of men. 

l 127 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

Clothed with the convidtion that true inspiration 
lies in responsibility, what better words of inspira- 
tion can this closing chapter bear than what will 
come from a final insistence upon the vastness of 
the ordinary man's spiritual responsibility and the 
grandeur of his opportunity ? In these days a true 
man rises instinctively to a broad outlook. He 
does not labour for his own self-fulfillment and 
nothing more. Of course, every aft of self-sacrifice 
for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake helps toward 
that end, for self-sacrifice for the promotion of 
whatever cause is always the negative aspeft of 
self-fulfillment. But Christians strive toward the 
best not from selfish motives, not merely because 
what God commands must be done, but because 
He has opened up to our gaze a vision of His 
world-purposes and shown us that obedience 
means cooperation with Him in their fulfillment. 
Thus small aftions become big with import. Per- 
sonal purity means a contribution toward the solu- 
tion of the divorce question which exceeds in its 
constru&ive influence the most wisely worded ca- 
non of marriage. The commercial honour of the in- 
dividual is the forging of a ward in the key that will 
some day unlock the closed door of the industrial 
problem. Faithfulness in spiritual duties in the 

c 128 ] 



The INSPIRATION of RESPONSIBILITY 

most circumscribed life is a voice that reaches the 
uttermost part of the earth and gives its undying 
witness to all who have ears to hear. Loyalty and 
charity working hand in hand in the Christian 
soul will do as much as the most carefully framed 
and comprehensive formula of agreement, to bring 
about that Christian unity for which our Lord 
prayed * when His time was short and His thoughts 
only upon that which was the objective point of 
the Incarnation. 

Whether or not men recognize the extent of their 
influence, that influence tells. But what a source 
of inspiration and strength is lost when these things 
are hidden and one sees only the natural side of life, 
the prison-house of environment and the task with- 
out its incentive ! The Architect of life would have 
His least workman know the full plan and not 
merely that of the small bit of it which is his spe- 
cial care. Once to discern our personal relation to 
God's world-purposes is to be for ever purged of 
dilettantism ; is to be for ever emancipated from a 
certain religious littleness that shackles so many 
Christian feet, and to move out into a breadth 
which involves no loss of depth ; is to shake non- 
essentials into the background, and bring funda- 
* St. John xviL 

[ "9 J 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

mental truths to the fore, where they can burn 
themselves into our very being ; is to receive a new 
motive for living and doing. 
Fired by a sense of large responsibility, sustained 
spiritual effort on a high plane becomes possible 
for each in his own little corner. The demand 
upon men to pray well, to seek to make the moral 
life blameless, and to deepen and enlarge the sphere 
of service, — in a word, to aspire to the stars and 
reach out to the four corners of the world, sug- 
gests privilege rather than hardship to the rank and 
file of the Christian army. The layman may not 
look to the priest as a vicarious man of prayer and 
of righteousness. The priesthood is representative, 
not exclusive, in character and service. The priest 
is a man of prayer not because he is a priest, but 
because he is a Christian, his priesthood but deter- 
mining the accidental features of his devotional 
life. He is a holy man not because he is a priest, 
but because he is a Christian, his priesthood but 
determining the sphere in which his holiness is to 
be expressed. The priest does spiritual work not 
because he is a priest, but because he is a Christian, 
his priesthood but making him a leader in service, 
primus inter pares. Faithfulness in prayer, righteous- 
ness in life, full spiritual service, are the responsi- 

[ 130 J 



The INSPIRATION of RESPONSIBILITY 

bility as much of the layman as of the priest. Failure 
in any one of these departments of life is as culpable 
in the layman as in the priest. It is notable that of 
all the vows in the Ordinal, whether in the order- 
ing of priest or deacon, or in the consecration of a 
bishop, the majority are but the expansion of com- 
mon Christian duty and could be as well taken by 
layman as by cleric. The functional peculiarities 
are as few as the representative duties are many. 
The priestly life is mainly, though not solely, the 
intensification of fundamental relations with God 
and man, as the Ordinal testifies, and the ideal 
priesthood, so far as it touches devotion, morals and 
common service, is but the perpetual and living re- 
minder to the laity of what they should be and do. 
There are many ready to decry sacerdotalism ; but 
few of these have sufficient logic to recognize that 
the more completely the ministry is denuded of all 
but its representative character, the more fully 
is the layman weighted with spiritual responsi- 
bility.* 

And spiritual work is as wide as human activity. 
The tendency to make religion a department of 
life instead of the Christian synonym for the whole 
of life, has given rise to such a redundancy as 
* See Moberlfs Ministerial Priesthood, chap. ii. 

[ 131 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

"applied Christianity." The life of common ac- 
tivities, social and industrial, is as truly the sphere 
of religion as the sanftuary. The natural is not the 
antithesis but the foundation of the spiritual. First 
that which is natural and afterward that which is 
spiritual — by transformation, not by substitution. 
The Resurreftion of Christ is a parable as well as 
a faft. And it is for the layman, whether he be the 
thinker in his study or the labourer in his ditch, to 
exercise his priesthood in the sphere of his occupa- 
tion, lifting to God for His transforming touch 
each transaftion in which he is engaged, recogniz- 
ing that all life is divine, and all business God's 
business. It is for the layman to enter into the bent 
of his age and train it to God, not holding aloof 
from popular movements and ambitions, but laying 
hold of them and labouring for their conversion and 
sanftification. Thus will the natural become the 
spiritual. The witness that the world of to-day is 
most in need of is that which will testify that if 
God is the God of the supernatural and extraordi- 
nary, just as really is He the God of the natural and 
ordinary, revealing Himself through and using 
common things as the general rule, turning to 
what is uncommon as the exception. Who can 
bear this witness so well as the layman in the home 
[ *3 2 ] 



The INSPIRATION of RESPONSIBILITY 

and in the market ? Certain it is that until this is 
done and theology has become much more than 
now part of the web and woof of common life 
among common men, theological assent or ecclesi- 
astical unity will accomplish but little toward uni- 
fying life in Christ in any worthy sense. 
This, then, is the ordinary duty of a Christian lay- 
man. It is not something optional, to be assumed 
or not as we prefer. It is what we must accept as 
our responsibility, if we accept Christ and look for 
acceptance in Him. The Church of to-day is com- 
ing to recognize this more and more, and is settling 
down to the work before her with wisdom and zeal. 
Even beneath the reaction against "organized 
Christianity," which has appeared of late, and 
partially explanatory of it, is moral earnestness, an 
earnestness that deprecates that conventional reli- 
gion which, narrow in both its vision and methods, 
fails to touch life with a hand of power. Men of 
aftion wish a Christianity which is weighted with 
responsibilities. Here and there one finds a nerve- 
less Amiel who can speak fine phrases, but who 
shrinks from responsibility. And here and there, 
too, is a dodtrinaire philosopher or an idle onlooker 
who croaks of degeneration and declares that life 
lacks inspiration. But all the while the workers, 

[ J 33 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

with eyes gleaming with hope, plunge into the 
most hopeless problems, and reap their inspiration 
from their toil. 



[ 134 ] 



Qpptnbix 



Where God Dwells t 




HERE is no truth so thrilling as that 
which "speaks of God's abiding pre- 
sence, not merely with but in His 
creation, though He is neither lim- 
ited by nor dependent upon it. Having created, He 
sustains, sustains from within, so that the most 
recent manifestation of energy, whether in the 
radiance of a sunrise or the smile on a child's face, 
is not the refleftion of a far-off movement of God, 
but an indication of His present working. God is 
behind the world of things, controlling and using 
all that is visible, so that the voiceless speaks and 
the lifeless lives and imparts life. But His delight 
is among the sons of men. He dwells in men, mak- 
ing their bodies His temple and their souls His 
throne. He dwells in nature because He dwells in 
man, as well as dwelling in man because man is 
part of nature. What will help a man to honour 
his own body and to reverence the bodies of others, 
f The Bis hop of Ripon, under the title of" Seeking and Find- 

[ 135 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

more than the thought that the Spirit of God fills 
the human frame as light fills the room, leaving 
no part untouched ? It is not sufficient to think of 

ing" gives the folio-wing text and exquisite little poem as a 

Diocesan Motto for 1899 : 

Master, where dwellest Thou? — St. John i : 380 

The Quest 

O Master of my soul, where dwellest Thou ? 

For but one Sovereign doth love allow, 

And if I find not Thee, quite lost am I-, 

Tell me Thy dwelling place : this is my cry. 

No travel will I shrink, no danger dread, 
If to Thy home, wherever it be, I may be led: 
Not where the world displays its golden pride, 
Only with Him, Who is the King, would I abide. 

The Finding 

Nay, not in far distant lands, but ever near, 
Near as the heart that hopes or beats with fear ; 
My Home is in the heaven, and yet I dwell 
With every human heart that loveth well. 

Not where proud perils are I place My throne, 
But with the true of heart, and these alone j 
So where the contrite soul breathes a true sigh, 
And where kind deeds are done, even there dwell L 

And those who live by love need never ask, 
They find my dwelling place in every task ; 
Vainly they seek who all impatient roam ; 
If brave and good thy heart, there is My home. 

[ 136 ] 



WHERE GOD DWELLS 

God as being in some organ of the body — the 
most worthy part, such as the heart or the brain. 
God's Spirit fills His temple with His glory and 
His power, making the least comely parts noble. 
He sanctifies each member in the fulfillment of its 
proper function. To misuse or abuse any power 
or faculty, is to drive the Spirit of God from His 
chosen resting-place ; whereas to surrender the 
members of the body and the faculties of the soul 
to His influence, is to lift up the whole man into 
increasing glory and beauty. 
But it is not difficult to accept the truth that God 
lives within His wonderful creation. The earliest 
dawn of religion perceived Him in His works of 
beauty and majesty, — the sun, the stars, the river, 
the tempest. And if He is immanent in that which 
is less, it is only logic to say that He must of neces- 
sity be in that which is greater — if in the world 
of things, much more then in the world of men, in 
the individual and in society. But so deep is man's 
instinctive reverence, so abiding his sense of un- 
worthiness, that it needed the Incarnation to con- 
vince man that he was destined to become the hea- 
ven of God. Yes, the heaven of God, for heaven is 
where God is rather than God where heaven is. 
All this has become an elementary truth of reli- 

[ 137 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

gion. Only it has to be expressed in new terms from 
time to time. The thought has to be recoined as 
the edges of language wear smooth, that its force 
and value may be recognized. The immanence of 
God, as thus considered, is not difficult for men to 
accept, unless indeed they wander into the barren 
wastes of a deistic thought, which banishes God 
from life as we know it, and makes Him a tran- 
scendent unreality. 

What does stagger men is the existence in a world 
in which God dwells, of the dark mysteries from 
which none can escape, — the disastrous storms, 
the difficulties, the pains of life. If, they argue, 
God dwells in the world, why does He not sweep 
away these heavy shadows, this over-much grief? 
There is only one answer, and it is this : God does 
not annihilate these things because He has a high 
use for them ; He cannot destroy that which He 
can inhabit ; God dwells in the dark places, in the 
wilderness, in the storms ; He has taken possession 
of them, and they are His just as much as the sun- 
shine and the fertile land. In short, God dwells in 
everything short of sin, even in the fiercest, gloomi- 
est penalty of sin. The angel of vengeance is the 
angel of God's blessing for all penitents who will 
accept him as such. 

[ 138 ] 



WHERE GOD DWELLS 

When our Lord came in the flesh, He entered into 
every human experience to abide in it all the days. 
He invested temptation, so that temptation is 
henceforth man's highest opportunity. He seized 
upon difficulty, and behold, it becomes a revelation. 
He invested responsibility till it became inspiration, 
duty till it became privilege. He wrapped Himself 
in sorrow, and sorrow is turned into joy. He ex- 
plored the darkest recesses of death, and death is 
the gate to life immortal. And these transforma- 
tions are for all time. 

It is a process of transformation, let it be noted, 
which these mysteries undergo. It is not that the 
temptation in time is swept away and an oppor- 
tunity substituted in its place ; but the temptation 
becomes an opportunity, and man mounts upon it 
to a higher level of self-sacrifice, or purity or hon- 
our. It is not that the difficulty is burned up by 
God's fire and a revelation comes gliding in as a 
sunbeam athwart the ashes of the difficulty ; but 
the difficulty itself becomes the revelation. The 
pain of Rebekah in child-birth as the children 
struggled in her womb, made her inquire of the 
Lord, and God flashed back the reply from the 
heart of her difficulty: "Two nations are in thy 
womb." Joseph brooded over the condition of 

[ J 39 J 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

Mary, his espoused wife, until, in the night vision, 
the angel of the Lord appeared, and said : "That 
Which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." 
His difficulty became a revelation. Similarly the 
dominant feature of responsibility becomes not its 
weight but its inspiration, of duty not its i ought' 
but its c may/ And so it is with sickness, and sor- 
row, and death. S. Paul's sickness, whether it was 
a malady of the eyes or Asiatic malaria is of little 
consequence, became to him spiritual health and 
power ; " My grace is sufficient for thee ; my 
strength is made perfect in weakness." As for 
sorrow, it is turned into joy, — the very thing that 
caused tears becoming the spring of smiles. And 
death, the king of shadows, is shorn of its horrors 
and becomes the entrance chamber to introduce 
into the presence of the King of Light. 
The Bible is full of phrases (in the Old Testa- 
ment, of course, they are prophetic, pointing to 
Messianic days) that tell of God's transforming 
power. Darkness shall be turned into light ; the 
desert shall blossom as a rose ; the barren shall be a 
mother of children ; the glowing sand shall become 
a pool ; and the thirsty ground, springs of water ; 
the deaf shall hear, and the blind see ; defeat be- 
comes victory; and the instrument of shame and 
[ HO 1 






WHERE GOD DWELLS 

torture, the symbol of glory and joy. And all this, 
which, through the Incarnation, has become a facl 
in common life, is a revelation of God's power, not 
to say love, which far exceeds in wonder whatever 
we knew before. It is appalling to think of a power 
so strong that it can annihilate with the irresistible 
force of its grinding heel ; but it is inspiring to con- 
sider an Almightiness that transforms the works of 
evil into the hand-maidens of righteousness and 
converts the sinner into the saint. And it is this 
latter power which eternal Love possesses and ex- 
hibits. He persistently dwells in the sinner until the 
sinner wakes up in His likeness and is satisfied with 
it ; He enters into the shadows and holds them un- 
til they become first as the morning clouds fingered 
by the earliest rays of the rising sun, and eventually 
as the brightness of the noon-day light. 
But men must not accept this as a mere poetic 
fancy, beautiful but not of practical value. It is 
nothing, if not a source of power. We must ex- 
periment with our own difficulties, sickness, sor- 
rows — yes, and our own death. There are those, 
Christian scientists and others, that espouse a false 
idealism, who meet the grim realities of life with 
a courage that is born of a lie. They deny the ex- 
istence of everything they do not like, saying that 

[ hi ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

sorrow and sin and death are not, that they are 
phantoms. They are not unlike the silly bird, 
which, finding itself hard pressed, buries its head 
in the nearest bush, and being unable to see its 
pursuers, deceives itself into thinking that it is not 
pursued. But "things and actions are what they 
are," so why should we desire to deceive ourselves ? 
The Christian's course of action is to say that these 
dark mysteries are real, but the Spirit of God in us 
will enable us to find the Spirit of God in them. 
Our Lord on the Mount of the Transfiguration, 
and later on in the Passion, tells the whole story. 
Calmly contemplating His own approaching death, 
which He had just foretold, and bringing it before 
the Father in prayer, He sees the transfiguration 
of the king of terrors, and, in a blaze of spiritual 
exaltation, speaks of His own decease so soon to 
be accomplished. Then afterward in the Garden 
of Gethsemane, on the way of sorrow, and upon 
the Cross, He was in every detail the victor. These 
final experiences of life did not seize upon Him ; 
it was He who seized them ; He wrung them dry of 
all that they had to give and for ever changed their 
character. Frowning monarchs they can never be 
to the followers of our Lord, but, on the contrary, 
powerful servants. Christ's victory was not in the 

[ 142 ] 






WHERE GOD DWELLS 

Resurre6tion any more completely than in the Pas- 
sion. It was in the former because it had been in the 
latter. Good desires brought to good effe£t, as the 
Easter Colledt puts it, end in the resurrection of 
the body and life everlasting. Viftory is not only a 
thing of to-morrow ; it belongs to to-day. The 
Christian's life is viftory all along the line. 
Let men, then, take their own hard, grim, specific 
pain or difficulty, and face it fearlessly and expect- 
antly, and they will find that the "worst turns the 
best to the brave." Let them throw their arms 
about it, and say with Jacob : "I will not let Thee 
go except Thou bless me." And, lo ! they will find 
that their arms are about God and His about them. 
If we pray God to sanftify our sickness, it is not 
that we expe£t Him to touch it from without. No, 
we look for more than that, much more. We ex- 
pert Him to reveal Himself out of the depths of 
the suffering, so that the more earnestly we look 
at it the more clearly shall we see Him and His 
Face of Love. Men who have done this with the 
lesser of the dark mysteries will be quite ready 
when the time comes to aft in the same way to- 
ward death, and say triumphantly: "Thanks be 
to God which giveth us the viftory." 
What is true of personal difficulties, perplexities 

[ 143 ] 



WITH GOD IN THE WORLD 

and sorrows, is equally true of the sorrows of a 
world. Let men remember that those who hold 
back timidly or discouraged from hand-to-hand 
conflict with social, political and industrial difficul- 
ties, are forfeiting their share in the largest kind 
of revelation. God dwells there, in corporate sor- 
rows, as well as in those of the individual experi- 
ence, and, if one may say so, in a fuller measure. 
The world needs brave men to-day, men who are 
determined to see God wherever He is, and He is 
in everything, everything short of actual sin. There 
is no philosophy so false to fafts as pessimism, ex- 
cept perhaps cheap and unthinking optimism. It 
is only the Christian philosophy that is equal to 
the situation, a philosophy which ignores nothing, 
howsoever gruesome, but which sees God master 
of His world, and nowhere in such complete pos- 
session as in its darkest corners. 
When God's storms come sweeping along, it is the 
Christian alone who can lift his head, look up, and 
stand erect as they enshroud him, for a Christian 
cannot fear where God is. Elijah could not find 
God in the storm that swept by him. But the 
youngest Christian can do what the stern prophet 
of old could not ; he can find God in all storms, 
for all storms are God's. 



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